Journal articles on the topic 'Exorbitant charges'

In this editorial we introduce new members of our editorial team and the contents of this issue. In addition we discuss open access developments of the journal, namely our new license policy, which allows authors to choose a Creative Common license that best suits their needs or the requirements of their funders. This change in licenses makes our journal also compliant with the Plan S programme, which several large European research funders have signed, in order to promote open access publishing. We support such initiatives, but note that they are designed mainly to push large commercial publishers to publish publicly funded research in open access. While the Plan S is a welcome program, commercial for-profit publishers charge exorbitant charges for open access, usually paid for by the researchers' institutions. We note that these charges are a form of rent extraction, which produces little added value, as the commercial publishers rely on the free labor of researchers and publicly funded research to fill their journals' pages. More so, due to these charges the public ends up paying again for the research it funded in the first place. We argue that public support for both institutional and independent non-profit open access publishing is a socially more just and sustainable model.

As older ways of raising credit declined or were re-defined, the acquiring of loans from a specialized group of money-lenders flourished in colonial Western Nigeria. Money-lenders charged exorbitant interest and insisted on loan repayment at a fixed date. Borrowing from the modern banking system, the money-lenders prepared legal documents and required surety. Debt recovery was generally painful to defaulters; they were humiliated, harassed, and had their property confiscated. The practice generated many conflicts. The debtor was generally unhappy, especially if the money was used for consumption. Lenders cheated with high interest rates and other charges and promoted for their own ends indiscriminate lending to poor and vulnerable people. To minimize conflicts and protect debtors, the colonial administration decided to regulate the trade with ordinances, especially the Moneylenders' Ordinance of 1938 which set limits to interest and forced lenders to obtain licences. In general, lenders subverted the ordinance, creditors and debtors became more cunning as documents were falsified to protect lenders, and those who needed money continued to accept harsh terms.

This article provides the first history and critique of Australia’s private refugee sponsorship program, the Community Support Program (CSP). As more countries turn to community sponsorship of refugees as a means to fill the “resettlement gap,” Australia’s model provides a cautionary tale. The CSP, introduced in 2017, does not expand Australia’s overall resettlement commitment but instead takes places from within the existing humanitarian resettlement program. The Australian program charges sponsors exorbitant application fees, while simultaneously prioritizing refugees who are “job ready,” with English-language skills and ability to integrate quickly, undermining the principle of resettling the most vulnerable. As such, we argue that the CSP hijacks places from within Australia’s humanitarian program and represents a market-driven outsourcing and privatization of Australia’s refugee resettlement priorities and commitments.

The present study is based on primary data of 720 students from primary schools in West Bengal, India. With adherence to the Logistic Regression Model, the study investigates and analyses the factors that influence digital learning of primary students during the COVID-19 pandemic situation. Further with the application of Welch’s t-test, comparative study have been conducted based on parameters as village and city school students, private and government school students and gender discrimination. The findings conclude that the school structure; willingness of the school and teachers to conduct virtual classes; availability and accessibility of high-speed internet and economic capability of parents to bear the exorbitant internet charges are significant dimensions in virtual learning of primary section students. The study also confirms that during the pandemic girl students and students from village government schools are the worst hit in comparison to boys who are from city-based schools and private schools respectively.

Martin Khor’s 1983 book on Malaysian economic dependence provided the first comprehensive estimates of the ‘colonial surplus’ from British Malaya. Khor described how Great Britain secured this from the colonial Malayan economy and estimated various types of surplus extracted via different means. Unsurprisingly, super-profits for privileged foreign capital owners are well known. The terms of trade have been important determinants of the colonial trade surplus. Financial surpluses are distinguished by those secured through the colonial currency board system, foreign commercial banks and colonial public finances, involving fiscal policy. The wealthy Malayan colony transferred funds to London at very low interest rates, but borrowed from British banks at exorbitant rates, besides paying high transactions charges. Colonial managerial privilege was also significant. Such surplus transfers were enabled by various colonial arrangements. Thus, colonial Malaya lost significant financial resources. Only some have changed in the post-colonial era, sometimes rather slowly. JEL Codes: B27, N15

With zinc acetate and butyl titanate as raw materials, pure ZnO and ZnTiO3/ZnO composite photocatalysts were synthesized by a sol–gel method and calcined at 550 °C. The crystal structure, morphology, surface area, optical property, and element valence states of samples were characterized and the photocatalytic activity of the prepared photocatalysts were assessed by the degradation of rhodamine B. Results show that the crystal structure of ZnO is a hexagonal wurtzite phase with a band gap of 3.20 eV. When the Zn/Ti molar ratio reaches 0.2, ZnTiO3 phase appears and ZnTiO3/ZnO composite forms, which advances the transfer of photogenerated charges. ZnTiO3/ZnO (Ti/Zn = 0.2) exhibits the highest photocatalytic activity, and the degradation degree of RhB reaches 99% after 60 min, which is higher than that of pure ZnO (90%). An exorbitant Ti/Zn molar ratio will reduce the crystallinity and form more amorphous components, which is not conducive to photocatalytic performance. Therefore, when the Ti/Zn molar ratio exceeds 0.2, the photocatalytic activities of ZnTiO3/ZnO composites decrease.

Learning outcomes The case explores Ayesha’s reasoning, who is also a financial expert, regarding how she approaches the question of Riba (interest) so that she can maximize her financial returns and remain true to her religious identity. The discussion in the case revolves around alternate rationalizations as to why Riba (interest) continues to remain important for many Islamic investors. Case overview/synopsis Historically, the prohibition of Riba (interest) prevented the exploitation of the poor borrower who was charged exorbitant interest rates by wealthy lenders. In the modern day, a banking system which operates in a regulated setup and charges market-based interest rates, the rationale regarding the exploitation of the poor seems less compelling. Furthermore, other economic realities such as inflation and currency fluctuations further lend support to protecting one’s investments through prudent financial decisions. In this case the authors approach this decision regarding the prohibition of Riba (interest) in Islam from the point of view of the protagonist, Ayesha Bhatti, who is religiously conscious and is faced with certain personal investment choices. Complexity academic level The case focuses on one of the core issues of Islamic finance (IF), that of the prohibition of charging Riba (interest) on debt and the reasons behind this ruling. The relevance of this prohibition to modern day financial markets is essential to understand IF. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Subject code CSS 1: Accounting and Finance.

“Operation Varsity Blues,” the university admissions scandal and ensuing federal investigation, made national news and captivated the public. Fascination with the scandal could have stemmed from the involvement of celebrities such as Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman and/or the sheer ridiculousness of the scheme, in which wealthy and prominent families paid exorbitant amounts of money to secure their childrens’ admission to elite universities. Others may have closely followed the resulting legal proceedings that included federal criminal charges like racketeering against 50 individuals and civil lawsuits against elite universities and celebrities with one suit seeking $500 billion in damages. Lawmakers’ attempts at preventing future university admissions scandals legislatively may have also caused curiosity. This article, though, explores the scandal’s intricate ties to college athletics and seeks to determine the most effective and practical means to mitigate the likelihood of a future similar admissions scandal. More specifically, the article explores how head coaches and an athletics administrator used their positions at academically elite universities to exploit a little-known NCAA rule permitting universities to use more lenient admissions standards for incoming student-athletes. Scheme participants falsely indicated dozens of applicants were incoming student-athletes in order to trigger the less rigorous standards and secure admission to elite universities. The criminal proceedings resulting from the scandal have yielded relatively light sentences for involved coaches, and civil suits against universities have been unsuccessful. California attempted to address the scandal legislatively, but, as this article explains, its reform package contains holes that fail to address many of the scheme’s key components. The article concludes that the NCAA, as opposed to lawmakers, the legal system, or individual universities, is in the best position to prevent, or mitigate the likelihood of, a future university admissions scheme like Operation Varsity Blues. Doing so would require only eliminating a single NCAA rule that is inconsistent with myriad other NCAA rules and principles and has resulted in decades of poor academic results.

163 Background: In the current era of rapid advances in cancer care, economic burden of these treatments is becoming increasingly apparent. Measures taken by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) such as closely monitoring length of inpatient stay might be inadequate in their goal to curtail costs. SEER analysis shows a 5-year overall survival for prostate cancer of 98.2 % and incidence of 179.1 in 2000 versus 97.8 in 2015 per 100,000, respectively. This encouraging result comes at the cost of increasing healthcare costs. Methods: We used National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database to extract data for patients hospitalized with primary diagnosis of prostate cancer using ICD-9 code 185. The 15-year time from 2000 till 2014 was analyzed. The metrics focused on were mean length of stay (LOS), mean cost of hospitalization and rate of discharges. Results: Discharge rate was 32.2 +/- 1.3 in 2000 versus 20.4 +/- 0.8 in 2014 per 100,000, respectively. Mean LOS declined from 3.7 +/- 0.115 days in 2000 to 2.2 +/- 0.044 days in 2014. During this same time period mean hospitalization charges increased from $14,680 +/- 466 to $49,464 +/- 1,019. The average annual inflation rate during this time period was 2.26%. After adjusting for inflation, the cost of stay in 2000 was $20,072 versus $49,464 in 2014. This effect is magnified when analyzing the cost per day of hospitalization. Cost per day in 2000 was $5,424 versus $22,483 in 2014. Conclusions: The increase in cost of inpatient stay is likely due to the advances in multi-modality treatment in prostate cancer. With the aging population and focus on cost conscious allocation of resources, this increase in costs will remain a challenge for hospital decision makers and insurance companies. We have to apply models such as the Markov model that are increasingly used to justify exorbitant prices of individual drugs. Also, given the complexity of health care costs, more variables should be included to rationalize health care spending. Cost metrics such as LOS are out dated given costs of treatments will continue to exceed costs such as nursing care and room and board costs. These complex analyses might be feasible with advances in deep learning which enable consideration of multiple variables in the decision-making process.

Abstract Background In the context of the opioid epidemic, infective endocarditis (IE) poses an economic challenge in Alabama. The objective of this proposal is to analyze the outcomes and financial burden of IE in persons who inject drugs (PWID) at The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Hospital, the largest tertiary referral center in this rural, Southern state. We hypothesized that those with the most severe substance use disorder would be most costly. Methods This is a retrospective study of PWID receiving care for IE at UAB Hospital from October 1, 2016 to March 1, 2019. IE was defined by Infectious Diseases consultation. Clinical data were obtained from the electronic medical record (EMR). Deaths were obtained from both the EMR and the regional medical examiner. Hospital costs (direct costs, overall charges) were obtained from financial accounts. To stratify patients by severity of substance use disorder, we used a 9-item risk assessment for PWID (see table). We then evaluated the association between clinical factors and outcomes (death, cost) using parametric and nonparametric tests when appropriate. A P-value < 0.05 was considered significant. Results A total of 69 persons met criteria (Table 1). The average length of stay was 30.8 days. Thirty-four (52%) had documentation of antibiotic completion (in or outpatient). Seventeen received surgery: 16 with valve replacement and one device removal. Overall, 14 (20%) died over the study period. There was no significant association between antibiotic completion or 9-item risk and death. When stratified into low risk (<4 items) vs. high risk (≥5), there was no difference in overall direct costs, LOS, or whether patients received surgery. Conclusion PWID with IE at a hospital serving a rural, Southern population have a greater length of stay, discharges against advice, surgical interventions, and costs than other regions, relative to existing literature. The lack of association between 9-item risk and outcomes suggests that death and high costs are attributable to factors beyond substance use. Costs of providing care for this population are exorbitant and likely devastating for rural county hospitals within the context of the current public health and payment framework, including Medicaid non-expansion. Disclosures All authors: No reported disclosures.

This project is about the design and construction of a 220 volts inverter at a frequency of 50Hz. The device is constructed with locally sourced components and materials of regulated standards. The basic principle of its operation is a simple conversion of 12V DC from a battery using integrated circuits and semiconductors at a frequency of 50Hz, into a 220V AC across the windings of a transformer. A battery charger is used to charge the battery using an intelligent digital display charger. This project (device) offers a better alternative to Public Power Supply, Generators as well as UPS considering it is cost-effective, noiseless, and easy maintainability. It was concluded that the inverter was constructed with considerable cost, available and reliable components rather than the more exorbitant unavailable ones. It was however recommended that the Government at various levels should encourage engineering practice by financing and training engineering within and outside the country for the benefit of the students and the nation at large.

The qualitative case study explores the effect of cost-sharing policy on the dropout rates of students in public secondary schools in the Limuru district, Kenya. Interviews were conducted with students who returned to school after they had raised money for tuition, teachers serving on the school district committee and the head teachers. The cost-sharing policy was viewed as a burden that has increased dropout, repetition and absenteeism in schools. Children from poor backgrounds continue to be marginalised as some national schools charge exorbitant school fees. Based on the findings the study offers some recommendations for policy-makers to consider.

This work is about a portable electric crop cutter machine that is made up of a very straightforward mechanism at a very low cost. Harvesting of the crop is one of the essential operations which call for a widespread quantity of labor. The availability and value of labor at some stage in the harvesting season are a severe problem. India is agriculture primarily based country that takes numerous sorts of crops. Nowadays diverse agricultural machines are accessible which are very expensive due to the current, it is not appropriate for poor farmers. To conquer the drawbacks of existing versions like pollution due to the fuel or gasoline and the fuel cost. The use of mechanical harvesting drives has been inflated in recent years. Farmers use reapers to harvest their crops however this means that especially combine; these are exorbitant making them unaffordable to most small-scale farmers. Now we introduced the solar-powered harvesting drive which is a two-wheel-drive the system used batteries to power the harvesting blades' motors and the solar panels are used to charge the batteries, batteries can also be charged from the home supply through the rectifier. This drive targets smallscale farmers who have an expanse of farm area of fewer than 5 acres. This solar-based machine will be beneficial for them. To cut back the expenses of farmers, these designs facilitate the farmer to reduce the production cost or assembly value and overcome the dependency on petroleum product.

Under U.S. Supreme Court cases Argersinger v. Hamlin and Alabama v. Shelton, the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires the provision of defense counsel to an indigent defendant for any charge that, if proved, actually leads to imprisonment or is punished by a suspended sentence that subsequently could lead to imprisonment. This article uses St. Louis as a case study to demonstrate that unconstitutional criminal procedures and underfunded public defender’s offices create no-lawyer-courts—courts that unconstitutionally allow defendants to go unrepresented. In a period of observation spanning 2014-2016, we found that St. Louis courts violated the right to counsel in misdemeanor prosecutions through lengthy confinements and exorbitant bonds, abusive plea bargaining practices, invalid waivers, and unconstitutional sentences. Drawing from court observations and electronic data, this study highlights how constitutional doctrine’s grant of procedural discretion to lower courts imposes injustice on poor and minority communities in practice.

The rising cost of the opioid antagonist and overdose reversal agent naloxone is an urgent public health problem. The recent and dramatic price increase of Evzio, a naloxone auto-injector produced by Kaléo, shows how pharmaceutical manufacturers entering the naloxone marketplace rely on market exclusivity guaranteed by the patent system to charge prices at what the market can bear, which can restrict access to life-saving medication. We argue that 28 U.S.C. § 1498, a section of the federal code that allows the government to use patent-protected products for its own purposes in exchange for reasonable compensation, could be used to procure generic naloxone auto-injectors, or at least bring Kaléo to the negotiating table. Precedent exists for the use of § 1498 to procure pharmaceuticals, and it could give meaning to the federal government's recent declaration of a public health emergency around the opioid epidemic, discourage new market entrants from charging exorbitant prices, and yield important public health benefits.

Abstract This article examines the impact of parallel importation and the doctrine of patent exhaustion on access to pharmaceutical products in developing nations around the world. Parallel importation is of particular relevance to developing countries given that it is in these countries where medicines are often limited and exorbitant prices can be charged for those drugs that are available. Against this backdrop, this article examines the international legal regulation of patent exhaustion and proposes a solution to the difficulties currently experienced by many developing countries in attempting to use parallel importation to promote public health and improve access to medicines. The solution proposed in this article comprises a regional approach to patent exhaustion, which involves the introduction of complimentary legal and policy measures to the regional framework that currently exists in the developing world. It is argued that this proposal strikes an optimal balance between protecting intellectual property rights and increasing access to medicines that works in the best interests of pharmaceutical patent holders and developing country patent users.

Currently, precious metal group materials are known as the efficient and widely used oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalysts. The exorbitant prices and scarcity of the precious metals have stimulated scale exploration of alternative non-precious metal catalysts with low-cost and high performance. Layered double hydroxides (LDHs) are a promising precursor to prepare cost-effective and high-performance catalysts because they possess abundant micropores and nitrogen self-doping after pyrolysis, which can accelerate the electron transfer and serve as active sites for efficient OER. Herein, we developed a new highly active NiFeMn-layered double hydroxide (NFM LDH) based electrocatalyst for OER. Through building NFM hydroxide/oxyhydroxide heterojunction and incorporation of conductive graphene, the prepared NFM LDH-based electrocatalyst delivers a low overpotential of 338 mV at current density of 10 mA cm−2 with a small Tafel slope of 67 mV dec−1, which are superior to those of commercial RuO2 catalyst for OER. The LDH/OOH heterojunction involves strong interfacial coupling, which modulates the local electronic environment and boosts the kinetics of charge transfer. In addition, the high valence Fe3+ and Mn3+ species formed after NaOH treatment provide more active sites and promote the Ni2+ to higher oxidation states during the O2 evolution. Moreover, graphene contributes a lot to the reduction of charge transfer resistance. The combining effects have greatly enhanced the catalytic ability for OER, demonstrating that the synthesized NFM LDH/OOH heterojunction with graphene linkage can be practically applied as a high-performance electrocatalyst for oxygen production via water splitting.

This study aimed to synthesize silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) by pomegranate and orange peel extracts using a low concentration of AgNO3 solution to controlearly blight of tomato caused by Alternaria solani. The pathogen was isolated from infected tomato plants growing in different areas of Saudi Arabia. The isolates of this pathogen were morphologically and molecularly identified. Extracts from peels of pomegranate and orange fruits effectively developed a simple, quick, eco-friendly and economical method through a synthesis of AgNPs as antifungal agents against A. solani. Phenolic content in the pomegranate peel extract was greater than orange peel extract. Phenolic compounds showed a variation of both peel extracts as identified and quantified by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography. The phenolic composition displayed variability as the pomegranate peel extract exhibited an exorbitant amount of Quercitrin (23.62 mg/g DW), while orange peel extract recorded a high amount of Chlorogenic acid (5.92 mg/g DW). Biosynthesized AgNPs were characterized using UV- visible spectroscopy which recorded an average wavelength of 437 nm and 450 nm for pomegranate and orange peels, respectively. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy exhibited 32x73.24, 2223.71, 2047.29 and 1972.46 cm−1, and 3260.70, 1634.62, 1376.62 and 1243.76 cm−1 for pomegranate and orange peels, respectively. Transmission electron microscopy showed spherical shape of nanoparticles. Zetasizer analysis presented negative charge values; −16.9 and −19.5 mV with average particle sizes 8 and 14 nm fin case of pomegranate and orange peels, respectively. In vitro, antifungal assay was done to estimate the possibility of biosynthesized AgNPs and crude extracts of fruit peels to reduce the mycelial growth of A. solani. AgNPs displayed more fungal mycelial inhibition than crude extracts of two peels and AgNO3. We recommend the use of AgNPs synthesized from fruit peels for controlling fungal plant pathogens and may be applied broadly and safely in place by using the chemical fungicides, which display high toxicity for humans.

Abstract Objective To analyze the quantity of cervical smears, also designated Papanicolaou tests, between 2006 and 2015 in all the Federal units of Brazil, as well as to verify the quantity of exams collected outside the recommended age range and the economic impact of such excess. Methods The data was collected from the Ministry of Health's database called Sistema de Informação do Câncer do Colo de Útero (SISCOLO), which contains all the test results collected nationwide by the Unified Health System (SUS, in the Portuguese acronym). From that, the number of exams and the age range of the women who underwent them were analyzed; besides, these numbers were stratified according to the state of where the exam was performed. The quantity of exams collected outside the recommended age range was verified, and, so, the economic impact generated was noted. Results Between 2006 and 2015, 87,425,549 Papanicolaou tests were collected in Brazil. Of these, 20,215,052 tests were collected outside the age range recommended by the Brazilian Ministry of Health; this number corresponded to 23.12% of all exams. From such data, considering that each Pap smear collected by SUS generates a cost of BRL 7.30 to the government, according to the information in the Tabela SUS dated September 2018, there was a total charge of BRL 147,569,880 for tests collected outside the protocol. Conclusion In Brazil, according to the Ministry of Health's protocol about the recommended practices on collecting Pap smears, whose newest edition dates of 2016, it is recommended that Pap smears are collected in women from a specific age range, in whom the potential diagnosing advantages overcome the onus of overdiagnosis or of a lesion with great regression potential. However, such protocols have not been correctly followed, promoting more than 20 million tests in excess, and an exorbitant cost for the Brazilian public health system. It is relevant to take measures to correctly use the official protocol, reducing the patients risks, as well as the economic impact for SUS.

Many rural households in Nigeria are less accessible to markets to transact their business. Traders travel considerable distance and pay high transport fare to convey their goods to markets for sale. This is because many rural communities are located farther away from where the markets are situated. It is on this background that this study examined the accessibility of traders to markets in some rural communities in Ayedaade Local Government Area of Osun State. Both primary and secondary data were utilized for this research. Three sets of data were required. The first set of data focused on the socio-economic characteristics of traders such as gender classification, family composition, level of education and possession of personal means of transportation. The second data required focused on the travel pattern of rural population to markets taking into account attributes such as distance travelled, mode of transportation mostly used, average travel time and frequency of trip to market in a week. The last category of data elicited was based on constraint of women to access market centres in the region. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyse the data. Findings reveal that the pattern of distribution of markets is in the study area is dispersed rather than random. Agricultural products and few manufactured goods are traded at Olufi central market in the study area. More than 60% of traders relied on Public transport (motorcycle), which charge exorbitant transport fare to convey their goods to markets. Arrays of goods traded in the market is the first major determinant factor affecting the markets patronized by traders in the council area and this accounts for about 17.53% of the total explained variance of the factor analysis. The study therefore recommends that there is need to provide community based transport services at subsidized rate for rural communities in Nigeria so as to enhance the accessibility of women to markets and participate in other productive activities in the rural areas of Nigeria.

Extraction of eye gaze events is highly dependent on automated powerful software that charges exorbitant prices. The proposed open-source intelligent tool StimulEye helps to detect and classify eye gaze events and analyse various metrics related to these events. The algorithms for eye event detection in use today heavily depend on hand-crafted signal features and thresholding, which are computed from the stream of raw gaze data. These algorithms leave most of their parametric decisions on the end user which might result in ambiguity and inaccuracy. StimulEye uses deep learning techniques to automate eye gaze event detection which neither requires manual decision making nor parametric definitions. StimulEye provides an end to end solution which takes raw streams of data from an eye tracker in text form, analyses these to classify the inputs into the events, namely saccades, fixations, and blinks. It provides the user with insights such as scanpath, fixation duration, radii, etc.

The academic publishing model is very inequitable currently – most commercial publishers demand exorbitant prices for access to journal articles, either through subscription or article processing charges. In this digital era, when publishing costs are negligible, and the peer review process is voluntary, it is unreasonable to have such high access barriers. In this article, we have explored the idea of an accessible and equitable knowledge dissemination platform using next-generation technologies and emerging models in publication to challenge the commercial publishers’ oligopoly in knowledge dissemination. Some of the upcoming practices, open peer review systems, transparent research data practices, and finally leveraging the advancements in digital technologies in publishing can be effective in creating efficient, transparent and cost-effective publishing systems. Encouraged by these recent developments, we have explored the possibilities of launching a digital publishing platform in India. We have analysed the existing open-source technologies like Open Journal System (OJS) and compared them with proprietary models like Editorial Manager to understand the gaps in both and explored avenues to conceive a cost-effective digital publishing platform. We hope that the open-access digital publishing platform will help the Indian journals upgrade their publishing systems up to the international standard, if not better, and help researchers explore a non-commercial avenue to publish open access articles.

The study analyzed awareness, attitude and behavioural intentions of medium and large scale poultry producers to poultry waste management practices in Lagos State with reference to problems of poor on-farm harness of excessive poultry waste, retrogression/unmet global environmental and economic waste management standards, exorbitant waste management charges imposed by LAWMA. Purposive and simple random sampling (using the lottery draw approach) was used in the selection of sixty (60) medium scale poultry farmers and forty (40) large scale poultry farmers, making a grand total of one hundred (100) medium and large scale poultry farmers interviewed in the study. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data from the selected medium and large scale poultry farmers with the aid of a list provided by the Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN), Lagos chapter. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to analyse the data. In the principal component analysis for medium scale poultry farmers, the key component named was that LAWMA should offer special service for isolated dead bird collection (V75); and for large scale poultry farmers, the key component was that the disposal of poultry waste in an environmentally friendly way is LAWMA’s duty (V76). The study recommended that the government makes provisions to offer awareness campaigns in order to improve environmental knowledge and encourage environmental enthusiasm amongst society.

In 1991-1992 Liberalisation has been initiated in Indian economy, and liberalization was incomplete without Globalization and Privatisation (LPG). All these initiatives have opened the doors for the private and foreign parties, who were interested in banking business. LPG has fastened the pace of growth in Indian economy, mobilizing the funds, immense infrastructure development, investment churning etc. From the customer perspective, services have been improved drastically, transaction time has been reduced, customers are empowered by technology driven banking. Earlier customers had to choose Public sector banks as an only option, to avail the banking services but after LPG there are many options to get banking services. Although private sector banks has given a intense competition to the PSU (Public sector units) banks but they joined the banking industry with a motive of profitability and wealth maximisation, a large number of complex products are introduced to meet the different requirements of the customer, but these products are not easily understood by the customers and leads to mis-selllling. In the name of the superior services, multiple and exorbitant charges are levied on the customers and erode the customer money. By arranging the modern looking facilities and maintaining physical appearance of the branch premises, higher Average balance is demanded from the customers. The services are based on the financial health of the customer. In this paper we briefly elaborate the post liberalization scenario and the bank practices with the provisions of the Customer service code 2018 (CSC, 2018) (Issued by Reserve Bank of India to take care of the customer interest by monitoring the customer services practices in banks). In this research we found that banks are lacking in providing services as per the commitments made by CSC and certain issues are raised by the customers regarding insufficiency in the services. Methodology- Structured questionnaire has been used to collect the data from private sector and public sector bank customers. So that, a representative data can be collected to draw the conclusions. Findings- In this research we found that banks are lacking in providing services as per the commitments made by CSC and certain issues are raised by the customers regarding insufficiency in the services. Practical Implication- This study provides an in-depth analysis of consumer’s problem and the level of unawareness among the customers about their rights. Hence, the apex banking authorities should take relevant steps to spread the awareness among the customer and take corrective actions, so that banking activities can be done as per the norms of customer service code. Originality- This research work is totally new in this field, researcher is able to collect only couple of studies in this field, rest are the literature is similar but not in the same field. It will add to the existing literature for further research. Keywords: Profit Motive, customer service code, Bank Practice, Customer Services

Bentham’s attack on organised religion was principally an attack on the ‘Church-of-Englandist’ ruling few, and, in particular, the ecclesiastical establishment. This article will examine Bentham’s argument that the ecclesiastical establishment fostered and exploited religious belief, as well as the hopes and fears associated with popular religiosity, in the pursuit of ‘sinister interest’. Bentham recognised a senior clergy that extorted enormous sums of money from the population, instituted a fraudulent education system that subjugated the children committed to its charge, and took advantage of the corrupt alliance of Church and state in order to advance and protect its worldly power and riches. This article will discuss Bentham’s proposals to sweep away the mischiefs done by organised religion, both to morality and to good government, and will argue that Bentham’s hostility towards the ecclesiastical establishment did not prevent him from recommending that priests be stripped of their power, place and exorbitant wealth as gradually and as painlessly as possible. It will also explain why Bentham thought that liberating religious belief from the coercive control of a self-serving class of men would be more conducive to personal happiness than prohibiting religion altogether.

The broadcast media landscape in Nigeria changed in 1992 following the approval of private individuals and organisations to own and operate private radio and television stations. In Rivers State, there are sixteen private commercial stations, in addition to two state-owned stations and the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN). Sadly, there is no single community-based radio station in the state, and the story is the same in most states in Nigeria, despite the important role such a media platform plays. Expectedly, the commercial radio stations focus mostly on issues of regional and national interest, leaving the rural populace unrepresented and their issues underreported. Against this backdrop, this discourse investigated whether the deregulation of the electronic media in Nigeria does not cover community broadcasting. The survey research method was used. The population consists of 649,600 residents in Obio/Akpor LGA in Rivers State, Nigeria, and the Australian online sample size calculator was used to derive 278. A systematic sampling technique was employed in the study. Questionnaire served as the instrument for data collection, and the data was analysed using simple percentages. The findings revealed that the development of community radio is being stifled by discriminatory and exorbitant licence fees charged by the federal government of Nigeria. In the light of this, this discourse recommends a far-reaching reduction of the licence fee for community broadcasting, as well as the end of licence renewal as currently practised in the country, to enable rural dwellers to actively participate in deciding issues that concern them.

Human trafficking, for the manipulation of migrant labour, is a violation of human rights. The spike in human trafficking is partly due to the rapid expansion of labour migration in the neoliberal period. The former Soviet zone has become one of the world's major human migration sections in the last decade. The article analyses the case of migration and trafficking in Tajikistan as remittances amounted to nearly half of the country's gross domestic product. In Tajikistan, lack of economic prospects, increasing poverty level, presence of blurred boundaries, leads to the cycle of illicit migration flows which resulted in human trafficking. Human trafficking is a multidimensional issue exacerbated in the countries of destination by poverty and gaps in economic openings versus unmet labour hassles and stern migration commandments. The migration of the Tajik people shortly began after the independence of the country and largely to support subsistence to the families leaving behind. Majority of these migrants prefer Russian federation as their main destination to work where corruption and human trafficking problem is huge. There are limited governing bodies to regulate recruiters' activities, so migrant workers are at the mercy of recruiters who are known to charge exorbitant fees that indebted migrant worker before arriving in their destination countries. Labour trafficking is a global humanitarian issue but there is scarcely any quantitative research on the issue. This study examined labour abuse indicators among migrant Tajik workers in the Russian Federation and the subsequent human trafficking risks with fresh vulnerabilities created by the economic crises and the covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

The supply of institutional credit plays an important role in promoting agricultural growth and also saving the farmers from the clutches of private moneylenders who charge exorbitantly high rates of interest and force them to live in perpetual debt trap. There has been a phenomenal increase in the flow of institutional credit to agriculture in the recent years but this has been quite uneven between regions. As of 2018–2019, the Southern Region had the highest share (43.0 %) in the institutional credit followed by Northern Region (21.0 %), Central Region (13.6 %), Western Region (12.0 %), Eastern Region (9.0 %) and North Eastern Region (0.9 %) respectively. Despite so much talk about the need for green revolution in Eastern India, the institutional credit to agriculture in almost all the Eastern and North Eastern states has been very poor. Based on various standard criteria such as credit–deposit ratio, credit absorption capacity, level of agricultural diversification and untapped potentials for higher agricultural growth and poverty reduction, farmers in the eastern states deserve a better deal in terms of access to institutional credit. Besides, the article explodes the myth of low credit absorption of farmers in Eastern India.

AbstractThose who claim, whether with fear or with hope, that algorithmic governance can control politics or the whole political process or that artificial intelligence is capable of taking charge of or wrecking democracy, recognize that this is not yet possible with our current technological capabilities but that it could come about in the future if we had better quality data or more powerful computational tools. Those who fear or desire this algorithmic suppression of democracy assume that something similar will be possible someday and that it is only a question of technological progress. If that were the case, no limits would be insurmountable on principle. I want to challenge that conception with a limit that is less normative than epistemological; there are things that artificial intelligence cannot do, because it is unable to do them, not because it should not do them, and this is particularly apparent in politics, which is a peculiar decision-making realm. Machines and people take decisions in a very different fashion. Human beings are particularly gifted at one type of situation and very clumsy in others. The part of politics that is, strictly speaking, political is where this contrast and our greatest aptitude are most apparent. If that is the case, as I believe, then the possibility that democracy will one day be taken over by artificial intelligence is, as a fear or as a desire, manifestly exaggerated. The corresponding counterpart to this is: if the fear that democracy could disappear at the hands of artificial intelligence is not realistic, then we should not expect exorbitant benefits from it either. For epistemic reasons that I will explain, it does not seem likely that artificial intelligence is capable of taking over political logic.

Problem: Sugar production has drastically reduced over the years due to several reasons. The effects of the Land Redistribution Program (LRP) on agriculture, price controls, associated inflationary economic conditions, and hostile international foreign policies have formatted years of economical upheavals affecting sugarcane production. The infrastructure which had been developed to the point of being among the most sophisticated irrigation systems in the world, is threatened with collapse. Approximately 872 out-grower farmers, largely beneficiaries of the Fast Track Land Reform and Redistribution Program, have acquired sizable tract of land hoping to build the sugar industry but numerous problems beset the sector players. Objectives: To find solutions to the sugar production through investigating and looking into the appropriateness of the out-grower support for this end. Methods: Out-growers, beneficiaries of the Land Reform program and targeted sugar producers were observed to be the best source of information on how best to revitalize sugar production in Zimbabwe. Probability random sampling technique to select the out-growers was used. A list of all the out-growers was drawn and using the Kth term every eighth name was picked until a sample of 100 was reached. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from the participants. Five-point Likert scale close-ended questions were used in the questionnaire followed by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient analysis for internal validity and reliability testing. GraphPad InStat Software (version 5, GraphPad Software, San Diego, California USA) was used for relative statistical comparisons between estimates with. P values of 0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: The population age groups of out-grower farmers were mixed with majority of them falling between 46 to 55 years with the majority of the farmers having 10 to 19 years of experience in sugarcane farming business. Most out-growers were educated holding at Ordinary (O) level of education. Out-growers who did ordinary level and above proved to be following the standard sugarcane procedures. A relatively high proportion of respondents followed the standard sugarcane growing procedures although the farmers did not possess enough business managerial skills. There was a notable difference in production between farmers that had formal sugarcane growing training than those that did not have. A significant proportion of lending institutions charged rather exorbitant interest rates and lacked flexibility required by the farmers. Conclusion: The general business operating environment for out-grower farmers was rather hostile with short loan repayment periods, reduced yields per hectare and low profit margins. The sugarcane out-growers were not keen to form syndicates for buying inputs or repairing infrastructures. Main recommendation: Out-growers should be provided with funding and training to allow them to utilize resources adequately to generate incomes that will allow them to support the agricultural activities efficiently without relying on input support from commercial plantation owners. Out-growers need to be encouraged to form partnerships for to enable them to advantages in reducing production costs.

Despite the period's fashionable aspiration to a materialist, scientific objectivity, the new wilderness revealed by the microscope in the nineteenth century did not lend itself quickly or easily to sober, observational consensus. Rather, the nature of the microscopic world was, like the cosmos, largely open to interpretation. Since techniques of observation were largely undeveloped, many microscopists were not certain precisely what it was they were to look for, nor of the nature of their subjects. Did monstrosity lurk at the threshold, or was the microscope a window to the divine designs of the creator? Monstrosity and the microscopic may be a familiar relationship today, but prior to Pasteur and Koch's development of a germ theory of disease in the 1870s, the invisible world revealed by the microscope was not especially horrific, nor did it invalidate long-standing notions of the divinity of Nature. It is more than probable that many microorganisms were, prior to their identification as causal agents of disease, looked upon and admired as beautiful natural specimens. Certain microscopists may have suspected early on that all was not well at the microscopic level (suspicion of wilderness is traditional within the Western cartographic project), but by and large nineteenth century microscopy was deeply enmeshed in the extensive romanticism of the period, and most texts on the nature of the microorganism prior to the late nineteenth century tend to emphasise (in retrospect, a little naively), their embodiment of the amazing, wonderful complexity of the natural world. Germany was the center of this modern fusion of romanticism, naturalism, and microscopic visuality, where the prolific microgeologist, Christian Godfried Ehrenberg (1795 - 1876) achieved considerable attention through his discovery of the intricately symmetrical, skeletal remains of unknown microorganisms in the calacerous tertiaries of Sicily and Greece, and Oran in Africa. Documenting these fossils in Microgeologie (1854), he established for them the group Polycystina, in which he also included a series of forms making up nearly the whole of a silicious sandstone prevailing through an extensive district of Barbadoes. These widely admired microscopic sea-dwelling organisms were later discovered and studied in their living state by Johannes Muller, who named them Radiolaria. Ehrenberg's pursuit of natural beauty, rather than monstrosity, was clearly appealing throughout the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Central to the aesthetic evaluation of the natural world inspired by his discoveries was a privileging of symmetrical forms as divine signifiers. Drawing heavily from Ehrenberg's approach to the natural world, it had been the intention of Gideon Algernon Mantell, Vice-President of the Geological Society of London and author of The Invisible World Revealed by the Microscope (1850), to "impart just and comprehensive views of the grandeur and harmony of the Creation, and of the Infinite Wisdom and Beneficence of its Divine Author; and which, in every condition and circumstance of life, will prove a never-failing source of pleasure and instruction" (ix-x). An admirable project indeed, but increasingly problematic in the wake of evidence suggesting the infinite wisdom and beneficence of the divine author included the scripting of destructive, ruthless, mindless, invisible agents of suffering and death against which human beings were granted little, if any, defence. What did such evidence say of our allegedly privileged role in the story of life on Earth? Where might the raw, biological body reside within such an arrangement? Precisely at the vulnerable center of the controversy surrounding the nature of its own existence. Not surprisingly, consensus on what the body actually is has always been fairly frail, since it closed its modern formation in conjunction with the revelation of the body's mysterious, "hidden powers" through the lens of the microscope, which radically expanded, and confused, the cartographic field. Renaissance anatomical representation, thought once to be so authoritative and thorough (maybe too thorough), now seemed superficial. And moreover, as shown by the discovery of electricity and its extensive, shockingly experimental application to the body, we were enigmatic entities indeed, consisting of, and vulnerable to, mysterious, untamed forces of attraction and repulsion. The invention of the "Leyden jar" in the eighteenth century, which allowed the storage and regulation of electrical charge, had been turned almost immediately to the human body, often with all the playful naivete of a child. As Sarah Bakewell (2000) writes: One experimenter, Jean-Antoine Nollet (1700-70), liked to demonstrate the power of the new equipment by lining up 180 of the king's guards with hands clasped and connecting the man on the end to a Leyden jar, so that the whole line leaped involuntarily into the air. (36) The discovery that the biological body was an electrical organism unquestionably inspired the exorbitant interest in the "ether" that underpinned much nineteenth century spiritualism, horror fiction, and the emergence of paranoia as a cultural condition in the modern era. Most notably, it disrupted the notion of an external God in favour of a "divine power" running through, and thus connecting, all life. And as psychiatry has since discovered, the relation of the body to such a deeper, all-pervasive, unmappable power - an ontology in which matter has no empty spaces - is "profoundly schizoid" (Anti-Oedipus 19). But this did not prevent its intrusion into nineteenth century science. Biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834 - 1919), nineteenth century Germany's most vocal advocator of Darwinism, openly subscribed to a mystical, arguably delusional approach to the natural world. Drawn to study of the microscopic by Ehrenberg, Haeckel was likewise attracted to the patterned aesthetic of the natural world, especially its production of symmetrical forms. Although he drew his fair share of critics, it is unlikely he was ever considered "sick", since neither paranoia nor schizophrenia were recognised illnesses at the time. Yet in retrospect his writings clearly indicate a commitment to what would now be regarded as a paranoid/schizophrenic ontology in which "matter has no empty spaces". Haeckel's recourse to monism may be understood, at least in part, as a reaction to the agency panic provoked by the invasion narrative central to the germ theory of disease: if all is One, notions of "invasion" become redundant and transformed into the internalised self-regulation of the whole. Devoted to monism, Haeckel was adamant that "ever more clearly are we compelled by reflection to recognise that God is not to be placed over against the material world as an external being, but must be placed as a "divine power" or "moving spirit" within the cosmos itself" (Monism 15). This conception of God is synonymous with that discussed by Deleuze and Guttari in their exploration of the nervous illness of Judge Daniel Schreber, in which God is defined as the Omnitudo realitatis, from which all secondary realities are derived by a process of division (Anti-Oedipus 13). Like a textbook schizophrenic, Haeckel stressed the oneness of the cosmos, its operation under fundamental conditions of attraction and repulsion, the indissoluble connection between energy and matter, the mind and embodiment, and God and the world. His obsession with the "secret powers" of the Creator led him to adopt the notion of a "cosmic ether", which was itself almost totally dependent on contemporary research into the properties of electricity. Haeckel wrote that "the ether itself is no longer hypothetical; its existence can at any moment be demonstrated by electrical and optical experiment" (Monism 23). Recognising the inherent conflict of nature whilst providing convincing evidence of its divine, harmonious beauty through his hundreds of spectacularly symmetrical, mandala-like representations of Radiolarians and other microscopic forms in Die Radiolarian (1862) and Kunstformen der Natur (1899), Haeckel furthered his views through several popular manifestos such as Monism as Connecting Religion and Science: The Confession of Faith of a Man of Science (1894), The Wonders of Life: A Popular Study of Biological Philosophy (1905), and The Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century (1911). For Haeckel, clearly entranced by the hypersignificance of nature, the struggle for biological survival was also a mystical one, and thus divinely inspired. Tying this notion together with the Volkish tradition, and clearly influenced by the emerging germ theory, which emphasised conflict as precondition for (apparently mythic) harmony, Haeckel wrote that: We now know that the whole of organic nature on our planet exists only by a relentless war of all against all. Thousands of animals and plants must daily perish in every part of the earth, in order that a few chosen individuals may continue to subsist and to enjoy life. But even the existence of these favoured few is a continual conflict with threatening dangers of every kind. Thousands of hopeful germs perish uselessly every minute. The raging war of interests in human society is only a feeble picture of the unceasing and terrible war of existence which reigns throughout the whole of the living world. The beautiful dream of God's goodness and wisdom in nature, to which as children we listened so devoutly fifty years ago, no longer finds credit now - at least among educated people who think. It has disappeared before our deeper acquaintance with the mutual relations of organisms, the advancement of ecology and sociology, and our knowledge of parasite life and pathology. (Monism 73-74). The "war of existence", according to Haeckel, was ultimately an expression of the ethereal power of an omnipresent God. Denying real difference between matter and energy, he also implicitly denied the agency of the subject, instead positing the war of existence as a self-regulating flow of divine power. Biological survival was thus synonymous with the triumph of divine embodiment. Since Haeckel was resolutely convinced that nature was hierarchically structured (with the Aryan Volk fairly close to the top), so too were its expressions of God. And since God was not a being external to the Self, but rather the vital spirit or soul running through all being, divinity may be contained by organisms in varying degrees depending on their level of evolution. Domination of others was thus a prerequisite for the pursuit of God. And this was the essence of Haeckel's highly problematic distortion of the Darwinist theory of evolution: At the lowest stage, the rude - we may say animal - phase of prehistoric primitive man, is the "ape-man", who, in the course of the tertiary period, has only to a limited degree raised himself above his immediate pithecoid ancestors, the anthropoid apes. Next come successive stages of the lowest and simplest kind of culture, such as only the rudest of still existing primitive peoples enable us in some measure to conceive. These "savages" are succeeded by peoples of a low civilisation, and from these again, by a long series of intermediate steps, we rise little by little to the more highly civilised nations. To these alone - of the twelve races of mankind only to the Mediterranean and Mongolian - are we indebted for what is usually called "universal history. (Monism 5-6) This fairly crude, very German take on Darwinism, with its emphasis on the transference of biological principles to the social realm, contributed to the establishment of the preconditions for the emergence of National Socialism in that country shortly after Haeckel's death in 1919. In The Scientific Origins of National Socialism (1971), Daniel Gasman reveals the extent of Haeckel's descent into mysticism and its part in the wider development of the Volkish myths that underpinned Nazism in the twentieth century. And although the "sick" ideals of Nazism are undeniably deplorable, upon review of the cultural circumstances in which Haeckel's ideas developed, many of them seem inevitable for a frightened, paranoid culture convinced - based on scientific evidence - that life itself can only ever be a form of war: the very notion that continues to underpin, and indeed sustain, the germ theory of disease in the modern era References Bakewell, Sarah. "It's Alive!" Fortean Times October 2000: 34-39. Carpenter, William B. The Microscope and its Revelations. London: J & A Churchill, 1891. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 1972. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1983. Gasman, Daniel. The Scientific Origins of National Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League. London: McDonald, 1971. Haeckel, Ernst. Die Radiolarien (Rhizopoda Radiaria). Berlin, 1862. ---. Monism as Connecting Religion and Science: The Confession of Faith of a Man of Science. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1894. ---. Kunstformen der Natur. 2 vols. Leipzig and Wien, 1899. ---. The Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century. Watts and Co., 1911. ---. The Wonders of Life. London: Watts and Co., 1905. Mantell, Gideon Algernon. The Invisible World Revealed by the Microscope; or, Thoughts on Animalcules. London: John Murray, 1850. Tomes, Nancy. The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998.