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The life of Bagan speaks through its villages, from the founding set of nineteen some two thousand years ago, until today. This formative role of villages, however, has been side-lined by the fame of Bagan as the centre of a great Buddhist empire. The present article focuses on one village, Myinkaba. The location, its history, tangible and intangible characteristics underpin an evolving community of trade, production and religious patronage. Other villages at Bagan likewise have developed their own personalities making this analysis a proposal and potential template for bringing a new perspective to dynamics of the ancient city and its sustainable future. Like all the villages of Bagan, Myinkaba’s culture is Buddhist yet mixed with animist and other elements from the interaction of Pyu, Bamar and Mon groups over many centuries. Of the capital’s nineteen ‘founding’ villages, Myinkaba is the only one anchored on a large seasonal water body or in-gyi. The prime location on the Ayeyarawady River has enabled trade in bamboo used for lacquer and other products over many centuries. The site also contains evidence of glass production and smelting in a series of kilns. Festivals earn income for the temples, with sale of traditional snacks and a puppet competition. Inscriptions and historical links with the ‘captured’ eleventh century ruler of Thaton, King Manuha, add associations to Mon areas of Lower Myanmar. We construct a working model to encourage further village-based excavation, related research and education in future years that may also contribute to the sustenance of the UNESCO World Heritage site of Bagan. ကျေးရွာများသည် ပုဂံ၏ သမိုင်းတင်ခေတ်ဆိုင်ရာ ရှေးဟောင်းသုတေသနပညာအတွက် အရေးပါသည့်ကဏ္ဍမှ ပါဝင်သည်။ သို့သော် ပုဂံ၏ ထူးကဲသည့် အနုဗိသုကာဆိုင်ရာ လေ့လာမှုများနှင့် ယှဉ်သော် ရပ်ကျေး ရွာကျေးများအား လေ့လာမှု အလွန်နည်းပါးပါသေးသည်။ ဤစာတမ်း၌ မြင်းကပါရွာ၏ ဒြပ်ရှိ ဒြပ်မဲ့ အမွေအနှစ်များနှင့်တကွ သဘာဝရင်းမြစ်များအား အတူလွှမ်းခြုံလေ့လာ၍ သုတေသနကွင်းဆက်များအား ရည်ညွှန်းတင်ပြသွားပါမည်။ မြင်းကပါရွာသည် ပုဂံမြို့တော်၏ မူလ ၁၉ ရွာ အနက် အစဦ်အလာ ပုဂံမြို့တည်သမိုင်း၊ ကျောက်စာ၊ ဖန်ချက်လုပ်ငန်း၊ တည်ရှိနေဆဲဖြစ်သည့် ယွန်းလက်မှုအမွေအနှစ်တို့အရ မွန်နှင့် ဆက်နွယ်သည့် တစ်ခုတည်းသောရွာဖြစ်သည်ကိုသက်သေထူနေသည်။ကျောက်စာအထောက်အထားများက ၎င်းရွာ၏ ရင်းမြစ်ကြွယ်ဝမှုနှင့် အရေးပါမှုကို မီးမောင်းထိုးပြနေပါသည်။ ပထမထောင်စုနှစ်မှသည် ယခုကာလထိ ကူးသန်းရောင်းဝယ်ရေးသည် သာသန အနုဂ္ဂဟများအား တွန်းအားဖြစ်စေသည့်အချက် ၁၁ ရာစုကတည်းကတည်ရှိခဲ့သော ဘုရားစေတီအများအပြား၌ သာမက ယနေ့ခေတ် လူမှုအဖွဲ့အစည်းများ ကြောထောက်နောက်ခံပြုသည့် ဘုရားပွဲများ၌လည်း တွေ့မြင်နိုင်သည်။ မြင်းကပါ၏ ရှေးဟောင်အမွေအနှစ်နှင့် ရှင်သန်ဆဲ အမွေအနှစ်တို့သည် ရပ်ရွာ အဏု-ဒေသများ၏ ဒေသိယ ကိုယ်ပိုင်လူမှုလက္ခဏာ နှင့် ယဉ်ကျေးမှုတို့၏ အခန်းကဏ္ဍကိုသာမက ယူနက်စကို ကမ္ဘာ့အမွေအနှစ် နေရာ ရည်ရှည်တည့်တံ့ရေး စီမံခန့်ခွဲမှု၌ ၎င်းတို့၏ အရေးပါမှု ကိုလည်း မီးမောင်းထိုးပြနေသည်။

Purpose – This qualitative approach study aimed to understand the barriers to accessing a tuberculosis (TB) clinic in a Thai hospital as experienced by TB patients from Myanmar living on the Thailand-Myanmar border. Design/methodology/approach – Twenty-two participants were asked to provide information. In-depth interviews were used to gather the information. Each interview lasted 40 min. Findings – TB patients from Myanmar experience several barriers to accessing TB treatment and care at Mae Sai Hospital, such as language and economic problems, although they are very satisfied with the quality of service and positive attitude of the health care providers. A long waiting time and lack of explanation of the pathogenesis of TB were noted as negative aspects by the patients and their relatives. The medical staff at the TB clinic were negatively affected by the excessive workload and unsuitability of some methods or technologies. Using budgetary subsidies from agencies to fund TB care and treatment was not sustainable. Foreign TB patients are not subsidized by the national universal insurance scheme of Thailand, and sending TB patients back to their home country is sometimes unavoidable. Originality/value – Thailand and Myanmar should strengthen their collaboration and develop a system to improve the quality of TB patient care and management for those who are living in poverty and lack education, by focusing on reducing language and economic barriers to accessing health care services including support for medicines and laboratory materials related to TB case management among these populations.

Abstract The purpose of this research was to determine the efficacy of iron oxide nanoparticles (Fe3O4-NPs) using microalgal products as a plant growth stimulant and antifungal agent. The work was conducted with the phyco-synthesis and characterization of Fe3O4-NPs using 0.1 M ferric/ferrous chloride solution (2:1 ratio; 65 °C) with aqueous extract of the green microalga Chlorella K01. Protein, carbohydrate and polyphenol contents of Chlorella K01 extract were measured. The synthesized microalgal Fe3O4-NPs made a significant contribution to the germination and vigor index of rice, maize, mustard, green grams, and watermelons. Fe3O4-NPs also exhibited antifungal activity against Fusarium oxysporum, Fusarium tricinctum, Fusarium maniliforme, Rhizoctonia solani, and Phythium sp. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), particle size analysers (PSA), and zeta potential (ZP) measurements were used to characterize these green fabricated magnetite NPs. FTIR analysis showed that the synergy of microalgal proteins, carbohydrtates and polyphenols is responsible for the biofabrication of iron nanoparticles. A spheroid dispersion of biosynthesized Fe3O4-NPs with an average diameter of 76.5 nm was produced in the synthetic process.

Abstract Background Tuberculosis (TB) is a major human threat, as evidenced by the large numbers of cases and deaths, particularly in developing countries with poor economic and educational statuses. Myanmar has one of the highest TB burdens in the world, but no TB information is available for people living in the rural northeastern regions of Myanmar. The present study estimated the prevalence of TB and identified factors associated with TB infection in people living in rural communities in Shan State. Methods A cross-sectional study was performed to gather information from participants. People aged 18–59 years who lived in the three areas with the highest numbers of TB cases in Shan State in northeastern Myanmar were included in the study population. A simple random method was used to select the sample from the villages. A validated questionnaire was used for data collection in face-to-face interviews after obtaining signed informed consent from the selected participants. The Mantoux tuberculin skin test (TST) was administered to detect TB infection, and a result that was 10 mm or greater after 48 h was considered positive. Chi-squared tests and logistic regression were used to identify the associations between the variables at a significance level of α = 0.05. Results A total of 303 participants were recruited for the study; 64.7% were females, and the mean age was 37 years (SD = 12.5). Most participants were Burmese (25.4%), and 14.95% were Shan. Sixty-three participants (20.8%) had a positive TST. Four variables were associated with TB infection in the multivariate model. Males had a greater chance of TB infection than females (AOR = 2.51; 95% CI = 1.32–4.76). Participants who were ever married had a greater chance of TB infection than participants who were single (AOR = 3.93; 95% CI = 1.18–13.00). Participants who used wood and charcoal as their main sources of energy for cooking had a greater chance of TB infection than participants who used electricity (AOR = 4.23; 95% CI = 1.25–9.64). Participants who had a low level of TB prevention and care knowledge had a greater chance of TB infection than participants with a high level of TB prevention and care knowledge (AOR = 4.49; 95% CI = 1.88–10.72). Conclusions Public health programs that focus on improving knowledge of TB prevention and care and avoiding the use of wood and charcoal as the primary sources of energy for cooking, particularly in males and ever-married individuals, are urgently needed.

Optimizing the coverage path planning (CPP) in robotics has become essential to accomplish efficient coverage applications. This work presents a novel approach to solve the CPP problem in large complex environments based on the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) and Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) leveraging the grid-based maps. The proposed algorithm applies the cellular decomposition methods to decompose the environment and generate the coverage path by recursively solving each decomposed cell formulated as TSP. A solution to TSP is determined by training Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) with Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) layers using Reinforcement Learning (RL). We validated the proposed method by systematically benchmarked with other conventional methods in terms of path length, execution time, and overlapping rate under four different map layouts with various obstacle density. The results depict that the proposed method outperforms all considered parameters than the conventional schemes. Moreover, simulation experiments demonstrate that the proposed approach is scalable to the larger grid-maps and guarantees complete coverage with efficiently generated coverage paths.

The scientific consensus is now on developing a biocontrol agent that can cause cellular metabolic reprogramming against agricultural pathogens. Biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles was performed by using phytopathogenic fungi (Alternaria sp.) isolated from banana cultivated soil. Alternaria sp. can grow very fast and produce high enough bioactive compounds. This study aims to biosynthesize silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) using fungal Alternaria sp.’s metabolites as a safe antifungal agent against plant pathogenic fungi (Fusarium spp. and Alternaria sp.). To visualize the formation of AgNPs, analytical instruments were used, such as ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy, Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX), and elemental mapping. The UV-visible spectra showed a peak at 435 nm. Analysis of scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) micrographs evidenced that the size of synthesized silver nanoparticles ranged between 3 and 10 nm. The resulting AgNPs showed distinct antifungal activity against selected plant pathogenic fungi. Synthesized AgNPs have demonstrated remarkable potential for the use of antifungal compounds to combat plant diseases.

Prion diseases can be transmitted across species. Here the authors use solid-state NMR to study prion protein (PrP) amyloids from human, mouse and Syrian hamster and show that their structural differences are mainly governed by two residues, which helps to understand interspecies PrP propagation on a molecular level.

To study the smelting reduction behavior of methane in the HIsarna process, the isothermal reduction experiments of HIsarna slag with 6 wt% of FeO were conducted at the temperatures of 1450, 1475, and 1550 °C, using 5 vol% CH4‐Ar. The effect of the gas injection flow rate on the overall reduction rate was investigated in the range of 0.5–1.5 L min−1. The results confirm that the decomposed carbon black acts as the dominant reductant in the reduction process compared to hydrogen. Increased gas flow rate increases the reaction rate, while temperature shows no significant effect. The reduction process could be described by the JMAEK model: by fixing the gas flow rate at 1.0 L min−1 with different temperatures, the exponent n value is around 1.5, indicating FeO mass transfer is the limiting step since there are sufficient carbon blacks as nucleation sites. The reduction process follows the first‐order model controlled by the reactant concentration with the gas flow rate being at 0.5 L min−1 and in the second reaction stage of the gas flow rate at 1.5 L min−1. The determined activation energy for the methane reduction is 59.8 kJ mol−1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the role of communities, local institutions, conservation organizations and government agencies in the governance of large-scale common-pool resources (CPR) at the Gulf of Mottama Ramsar wetland, Myanmar before and one year after the 2021 coup d'état. The research employed a mixed method approach in two villages in the GOM on common alluvial land, waterbirds, and fisheries CPRs. The robustness of CPR governance is evaluated with Ostrom's eight design principles. We found that pre-coup the formation of local user associations, livelihood incentive strategies, and co-management approaches were increasingly effective to conserve fisheries and waterbirds CPRs, while land conflicts over new common alluvial land persisted. One year following the coup, offshore fisheries especially faced challenges from illegal practices by outsiders, due to significantly weakened co-management practices and accountability of local authorities and large-scale commercial fishers to the fishing communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The role of leptin in respiratory function has been studied in specific respiratory disease. A little is known about the association of serum leptin level and respiratory function parameter in healthy subjects. Aims and Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between anthropometric indices, serum leptin and respiratory function in Myanmar male adult subjects Material and Methods: A community- based cross-sectional comparative study was carried out in 101 apparently healthy male adult subjects of age 18-45 years. All participants were categorized by anthropometric indices into non- obese (body mass index: BMI < 25 Kg/m2 and obese subjects (BMI > 30 Kg/m2). Differences in respiratory function parameter and serum leptin level were compared across the group. Spirobank II spirometer was used to measure respiratory function (FEV1, FVC, FEV1/FVC, PEFR and FEF25-75%). Serum leptin level was investigated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results: The percentage of predicted value of all respiratory function parameters of obese group was significantly lower than that of non-obese group (p