Search

Commitments for sustainable growth often look good on paper but are messy in the practice. The Government of Bangladesh shows huge initiative towards SDG 14 (conservation and sustainable use of marine resources) by establishing measures to improve the stock of hilsa fish in the country, thus ensuring the supply of a valuable and charismatic fish species. Initial reports of the measures are optimistic, suggesting larger sizes of fish caught across the seasons. Bigger hilsa fetches better prices – as high as US$25 per kilo in niche markets. It is conservation business with profits. Yet the costs of these regulations are falling squarely on the shoulders of small fishermen who are poor, uneducated and in permanent debt. The government offers a small in-kind payment for ecosystem service (PES) in the form of rice, which is good but does not compensate for the loss of revenues and household protein during bans. These small fishers have no bargaining power and no voice in the design of policies that affect them. A common problem in policy design is the lack of clarity of the markets they affect, especially if they are informal. This study uses value chain models to unpick the hilsa value chain. It study provides hard data and evidence on processes, power, and profit creation. This consultation can help policy makers design better strategies to re-govern markets in more inclusive ways and help to achieve Sustainable Development Goals commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the most common diseases among the elderly people. Typically, medical attention is not sought until the disease has progressed to a point at which it is not possible to treat effectively, often due to concerns over the cost of detection at an earlier stage. Ultrasound (US) imaging has a number of advantages as an imaging technique; apart from being a low cost diagnostic method, it is also non-invasive, utilizes non-ionizing radiation and portable. Due to progression of knee OA, the cartilage will experience a significant change in shape, and it becomes degenerated. After image processing using US medical imaging, it is possible to detect the cartilage shape change of the knee joint. Low contrast ratio and speckle noise are two main disadvantages of US imaging. The aim of this paper is to present a method for enhancing the contrast of the US image of knee joint cartilage in detecting early stages of knee OA. Conventional contrast enhancing methods are known to have some limitations. The objective of this paper is to propose a new contrast enhancing method which can overcome the limitations of the conventional contrast enhancing method. Most conventional contrasts enhancing methods emphasize only on one character. In the proposed method, the optimum value of contrast, brightness and detail preservation are considered. The proposed method is applied to find out the optimum separating point for segmenting the histogram of US image, for which optimum value of contrast, brightness and detail preservation will be preserved. In this method as well, three metrics, named as Preservation of Brightness Score function (PBS), Optimum Contrast Score function (OCS) and Preservation of Detail Score function (PDS), are defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]