Purpose
This paper aims to highlight the lacunae in international trade law concerning unilateral economic sanctions that impact food security.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper adopts a ...literature review to establish that unilateral economic sanctions impact food security and a descriptive assessment of a few such sanctions. Thereafter, it adopts doctrinal analysis of such sanctions under World Trade Organization law and identifies the gaps to address the specific situation of unilateral economic sanctions that impact food security.
Findings
Unilateral economic sanctions are not effectively regulated under international law. Unilateral economic sanctions are known to impact food security not just in the targeted country but also in third countries. Under international trade law, the security exception under Article XXI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) does not currently require an assessment of necessity and proportionality of measure. However, there is scope for such an assessment in the future depending on the circumstances, particularly if a measure impacts the rights and interests of third countries by impacting global food security.
Originality/value
The paper conducts a literature review of the impact of unilateral economic sanctions on food security. It highlights the gap in the interpretation of GATT Article XXI when assessing such sanctions that adversely impact the food security of third countries. The paper may be helpful for academics, policymakers, international organizations, non-governmental organisations, etc.
In software engineering field, requirement change management is a challenging job. Ignoring incoming changes results in customer displeasure. It may also result in late product transportation. ...Managing requirement changes in poor way is the main cause of product failure. It has more diverse effect in global software outsourcing. In software quality requirement change management, it is necessary to address success factors in order to accomplish the requirements of the customers. In this paper, systematic literature review approach is used for documentation and scrutinization of success factors. Total sixteen success factors were recognized having great impact on quality software requirement change management. Our identified success factors like 'Proper Requirement Change Management', 'Rapid Delivery', 'Quality Software Product, Access to Market', 'Project Management', 'Skills and Methodologies', 'Low Cost/Effort Estimation', 'Clear Plan and Road Map', 'Agile Processes', 'Low Labor Cost', 'User Satisfaction', 'Communication/Close Coordination', 'Proper Scheduling and Time Constraints', 'Frequent Technological Changes', 'Robust Model', 'Geographical juncture/Cultural differences' are the crucial factors that affect software quality requirement change. Company size and different database have been used for the analysis of success factors. The databases/search engine used are Google scholar, Science Direct, IEEE Explore and Springer for the exploration of success factors. Companies are analyzed on the basis of their size such as small, medium and large.
Past and the projected future climate change in Afghanistan has been analyzed systematically and differentiated with respect to its different climate regions to gain some first quantitative insights ...into Afghanistan’s vulnerability to ongoing and future climate changes. For this purpose, temperature, precipitation and five additional climate indices for extremes and agriculture assessments (heavy precipitation; spring precipitation; growing season length (GSL), the Heat Wave Magnitude Index (HWMI); and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI)) from the reanalysis data were examined for their consistency to identify changes in the past (data since 1950). For future changes (up to the year 2100), the same parameters were extracted from an ensemble of 12 downscaled regional climate models (RCM) of the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX)-South Asia simulations for low and high emission scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways 4.5 and 8.5). In the past, the climatic changes were mainly characterized by a mean temperature increase above global level of 1.8 °C from 1950 to 2010; uncertainty with regard to reanalyzed rainfall data limited a thorough analysis of past changes. Climate models projected the temperature trend to accelerate in the future, depending strongly on the global carbon emissions (2006-2050 Representative Concentration Pathways 4.5/8.5: 1.7/2.3 °C; 2006-2099: 2.7/6.4 °C, respectively). Despite the high uncertainty with regard to precipitation projections, it became apparent that the increasing evapotranspiration is likely to exacerbate Afghanistan’s already existing water stress, including a very strong increase of frequency and magnitude of heat waves. Overall, the results show that in addition to the already extensive deficiency in adaptation to current climate conditions, the situation will be aggravated in the future, particularly in regard to water management and agriculture. Thus, the results of this study underline the importance of adequate adaptation to climate change in Afghanistan. This is even truer taking into account that GSL is projected to increase substantially by around 20 days on average until 2050, which might open the opportunity for extended agricultural husbandry or even additional harvests when water resources are properly managed.
Requirement change management plays an important role in the business world where management in the business scenario is a hard-hitting assignment because of continuously changing customer choices in ...respect of requirements. Giving no attention to requirement change management challenges result in consumers' discontent. Main cause of business products is that there is no planning regarding requirement change management. Furthermore, it also affects market value. Dealing in requirement change management, it's far important to cope with those challenges to undertake the requirement of the business consumers. This article focuses on documentation and control of quality requirement challenges by using an approach of systematic literature review. The main goal of this article is to classify critical challenges being faced by vendor companies in global software development. A total of fourteen challenges have been documented which have a severe effect on the management of quality requirements. Challenges documented by an author like 'Incomplete requirements', 'Lack of Communication & Coordination, etc. are the key challenges harming managing quality requirement changes. Among these fourteen challenges, nine challenges are marked as critical challenges whose ratios are above 25%. The identified challenges were analyzed decade wise where we categorized them into three decades i.e. first decade (1992-2002), the second decade (2003-2012), and the third decade (2013-2021).
Intracranial calcification may result from disturbances in calcium metabolism. It often remains asymptomatic, but may present with symptoms like seizure and neurological deficits. Correction of the ...underlying metabolic disturbance before damage of neuronal tissues due to intracranial calcification may be useful in preventing irreversible neurological deficits. This window period may be the crucial period that needs a thorough clinical evaluation and urgent intervention. We highlight the case of an adult woman with Fahr's disease presented with generalised tonic-clonic seizure. The management priorities were also discussed along with review of literature.
This study is aimed to explore the types of CAM and reasons of using CAM among elderly Malaysians.
This cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample of 256 conveniently selected elderly Malaysians ...who were residing in the states of Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. A pre-validated interview-administered questionnaire was used to gather information. Data was entered into PASW version 18 and analyzed.
A total of 256 questionnaires were included in the study. A response rate of 64% was achieved. Out of 256 respondents, 92 (35.9%) were male while 164 (64.1%) were female. More than half of the respondents (n = 141; 55.1%) agreed that CAM is more effective than allopathic medicine. Chinese respondents showed strong belief in the effectiveness of CAM. In terms of safety of CAM, close to three quarters of respondents (n = 178; 69.5%) believed that CAM is safer than allopathic medicine. A large majority of respondents agreed that CAM has less side effects compared to allopathic medicine (n = 201; 78.5%) and also agreed that CAM is good to maintain overall health and wellbeing (n = 212; 82.8%). A majority of the respondents expressed that they use CAM because allopathic medicine is less effective (n = 113; 44.1%).
The current study reflects the reasons of using CAM among lay public from different ethnicities. There are no reports of adverse effects related to CAM use. Future approaches should be intended for awareness campaigns for consumers, highlighting safety profile of CAM and as well as forbidding their use without the consultation of healthcare professional.
Different extraction processes were employed to extract bioactive metabolites from Salacca zalacca flesh by a range of aqueous and organic solvents. The highest extraction yield was obtained by 50% ...ethanol extract of SE (73.18 ± 4.35%), whereas SFE_1 showed the lowest yield (0.42 ± 0.08%). All extracts were evaluated for in vitro α-glucosidase inhibitory activity, measured by their IC
50
values in comparison to that of quercetin, the positive control (IC
50
= 2.7 ± 0.7 μg/mL). The lowest α-glucosidase inhibitory activity was indicated by water extract of SE (IC
50
= 724.3 ± 42.9 μg/mL) and the highest activity was demonstrated by 60% ethanol extract by UAE (IC
50
= 16.2 ± 2.4 μg/mL). All extracts were analysed by GC-MS and identified metabolites like carbohydrates, fatty acids, organic acids, phenolic acids, sterols and alkane-based compounds etcetera that may possess the potential as α-glucosidase inhibitor and may attribute to the α-glucosidase inhibitory activity.
Purpose: To develop a reverse phase high performance liquid
chromatography (RP-HPLC) method for the analysis of the crude extracts
of Orthosiphon stamineus. Methods: A simple and facile analytical
...method was developed using RP-HPLC with UV detection for the
identification and quantitation of bioactive markers present in O.
stamineus extracts. Four different bioactive markers were used for the
analysis, namely, rosmarinic acid, orthosiphol-A, 3'-hydroxy-5,
6, 7, 4'-tetramethoxyflavone (TMF) and 5, 6, 7, 3',
4'-pentamethoxyflavone (sinensetin), using an isocratic mobile
phase methanol: tetrahydrofuran: water (0.1% H3PO4) (55:5:40) on
Nucleosil C-18 column (250 mm x 4.6 mm i.d., 5 µm particle size)
at a flow rate of 0.7 ml/min and detection at 330 nm with 30 min
separation time. Results: The bioactive marker orthosiphol A was
identified and isolated from the water extract of O. stamineus leaves.
The standard calibration curves for the marker were linear in the range
0.01 -500 µg/ml with a regression coefficient (r2) > 0.9996.
The recoveries of the four markers were in the range 83.2 to 106.4 % at
relative standard deviation (RSD) values 5 %. The limit of detection
(LOD) and of quantification (LOQ) were 2 and 20 ng/ml, respectively.
Conclusion: The developed method is simple, sensitive and specific for
simultaneous determination of the indicated marker compounds either
qualitatively or quantitatively, and may be used as a fingerprint
profile for the standardization of extractives or herbal medicines from
O. stamineus.
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