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The purpose of this paper is to analyse nanosecond pulsed laser ablation on both metallic materials and non-metallic materials; a comparison between metallic materials and non-metallic materials has also been included.

In this paper, FEM method has been used to calculate the result by means of the finite element method. Furthermore, all the analyses are based on thermal theories.

The paper presents a comparison of metallic and non-metallic materials. Besides, the effect of how laser parameter changes would influence the ablation depth has also been assessed.

All studies in this paper are based on classical thermal theories. Thermal theories are not applicable some times.

With the results of this paper, suggestions are made so that experiments and manufactures could be optimised and improved.

Since the development of the COVID-19 vaccinations, questions surrounding race have been prominent in the literature on vaccine uptake. Early in the vaccine rollout, public health officials were concerned with the relatively lower rates of uptake among certain racial/ethnic minority groups. We suggest that this may also be patterned by racial/ethnic residential segregation, which previous work has demonstrated to be an important factor for both health and access to health care.

In this study, we examine county-level vaccination rates, racial/ethnic composition, and residential segregation across the U.S. We compile data from several sources, including the American Community Survey (ACS) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) measured at the county level.

We find that just looking at the associations between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, both percent Black and percent White are significant and negative, meaning that higher percentages of these groups in a county are associated with lower vaccination rates, whereas the opposite is the case for percent Latino. When we factor in segregation, as measured by the index of dissimilarity, the patterns change somewhat. Dissimilarity itself was not significant in the models across all groups, but when interacted with race/ethnic composition, it moderates the association. For both percent Black and percent White, the interaction with the Black-White dissimilarity index is significant and negative, meaning that it deepens the negative association between composition and the vaccination rate.

The analysis is only limited to county-level measures of racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, so we are unable to see at the individual-level who is getting vaccinated.

We find that segregation moderates the association between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, suggesting that local race relations in a county helps contextualize the compositional effects of race/ethnicity.

Across the United States (US), COVID-19 vaccination coverage was lower in rural counties compared to urban counties, exacerbating rural health inequities. While rural communities fall short of the public health goal to vaccinate all who are eligible, most rural residents have chosen to vaccinate for COVID-19. The aim of this study was to better understand rural New Mexicans' attitudes and beliefs about COVID-19 vaccines.

We conducted and analyzed 51 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with adults living in rural New Mexican counties, covering a range of topics related to the pandemic, including vaccines. These interviews were conducted in the Summer of 2021 after the vaccines were widely available to all adults over the age of 18 and youth between the ages of 12–17, but not yet available for children under 12 years.

Two major perspectives were identified: (1) the idea that COVID-19 vaccinations are a tool that individuals can use to achieve freedom and protection and (2) the view which regarded vaccines as an infringement of personal rights and one's autonomy of health. For people who viewed the vaccine as a tool for freedom, several themes emerged, including (1) a preference for vaccine manufacturers, specifically a preference for Pfizer, and (2) frustrations related to vaccine access, specifically, older adults expressed frustrations with the difficulty of scheduling vaccination appointments. However, most participants felt as though they had enough vaccination resources. For people who viewed vaccines (and vaccine mandates) as limiting their freedom, additional themes emerged: (1) overarching distrust of government and the perception that vaccines were an extension of government and (2) distrust in the vaccines themselves, including a perceived lack of research on the vaccines and a perception that the vaccine was developed in too short of a period. Some of the people who hold these beliefs are also vaccinated. We draw from social psychology theories to better understand how people who hold a rural identity come to establish different beliefs and practices compared to larger metropolitan regions. While political identity is a contributor, of our participants, the group who were most likely to report not being vaccinated were the “independent” or “unaffiliated voters.” Our findings can help craft culturally responsive vaccine initiatives for rural communities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine public sector accounting reforms, mainly the adoption and implementation of the Cash Basis International Public Sector Accounting Standard (IPSAS) in the Central Government of Bangladesh.

Drawing on the ideas of new institutionalism, the paper investigates the factors which have forced the country to accept the Cash Basis IPSAS but have delayed its implementation in practice.

Different approaches towards the Cash Basis IPSAS are now distinct in the Central Government of Bangladesh. Differences between Bangladesh and other emerging economies have been narrowed as the potency of institutional pressures has increased, and there is a risk, as experienced in other emerging economies, that the very adoption of the Cash Basis IPSAS may remain more a rhetoric than a reality in Bangladesh. The paper demonstrates that the extent to which professional accountants and their associations participate in reforms determines the public sector accounting reform trajectories in emerging economies.

The paper demonstrates that reforms driven by indigenous administrators can have the potential of becoming more instrumental in emerging economies than the externally propagated reforms, such as IPSASs and accrual accounting. What is important is to advance incrementally those public sector accounting reforms that local administrators have identified as important, that they could cope with their existing knowledge and capacity, and that they are interested in engaging with the reform process.

First, the study has contributed to extending neo-institutional theory by bringing out the responses of different stakeholders responsible for implementing public sector accounting reforms, mainly the Cash Basis IPSAS, in practice. Next, the paper has raised a question as to whether the Cash Basis IPSAS could be an appropriate reform measure for the central government of Bangladesh.

Salinity is one of the major problems in the coastal region of Bangladesh that contributes to 20% of the total land area. About 53% of the coastal region is affected by different degrees of salinity. Salinity intrusion in this area is mainly derived through climate change as well as anthropogenic factors that make this region more vulnerable. Hence, salinity intrusion has adverse effects on water, soils, agriculture, fisheries, ecosystem, and livelihoods of this region. To ensure the availability of food as well as drinking water, this chapter highlights how individual and community people have endeavored several adaptation measures to minimize salinity effects. Moreover, it further discloses governmental and other development organizations’ actions toward salinity to reduce its impacts.

All over the world, Bangladesh is well known as a flood- and cyclone-affected country. But in the recent years the slow onset disaster of drought is more frequent in Bangladesh due to climatic as well as nonclimatic variability. As a consequence, agriculture along with its dependent farmers’ livelihoods tremendously experience its adverse impacts. Therefore, the main focus of this chapter is to discuss about drought, its effects on different sectors, and how in different levels a number of drought risk management actions are carried out to cope with this insidious disaster in the context of Bangladesh.

Many people as well as the government in Bangladesh perceive floods and cyclones as recurrent environmental hazards in the country. They also view that these two hazards are the main contributors to crop loss in the country. But, in reality, droughts afflict the country at least as frequently as do major floods and cyclones, averaging about once in 2.5 years (Adnan, 1993, p. 1; Erickson, 1993, p. 5; Hossain 1990, p. 33). In some years, droughts not only cause a greater damage to crops than floods or cyclones, but they also generally affect more farmers across a wider area (Paul, 1995). If not institutionally and economically tackled, the consequences tend to have a far-reaching effect on the given society, and the socioeconomic problems would assume a chronic pattern.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on the regional impacts of Climate Change (IPCC, 2007a), a drastic change in rainfall patterns in the warmer climate would occur in Bangladesh, and it may experience a 5% to 6% increase of rainfall by 2030 due to glacier melting and more intense monsoons, which will create frequent large and prolonged floods as well as an increase in droughts outside the monsoon season. Furthermore, in the context of global warming, most of the climatic models project a decrease in precipitation in the dry season and an increase during the monsoon season in south Asia (Christensen et al., 2007). This will cause a combination of more extreme floods and droughts in this region. Therefore, the moderately drought-affected areas will be turned into severely drought-prone areas within next 20 to 30 years (IPCC, 2007b).

The purpose of this paper is to conduct an in-depth analysis of the literature and provide new insights on skill development research in India. Objectives in the study are twofold. First is to conduct descriptive analysis in terms of structural dimensions such as geographical context, focus on skill development, research methods, economic sector, type of training and origin of the study. The second objective is to conduct thematic analysis on importance of skill development, institutional and regulatory mechanisms, skill development as an antecedent for technology adoption, role of skill development in women empowerment, integrating skill development with secondary education and labour market reforms for skill development.

Systematic literature review method is employed to review 45 articles on skill development research in India conducted between 2004 and 2017.

The review discusses about the importance of skill development, the role of institutions such as NSDA and PMKVJ, skill development as a necessity in the advent of technological changes, an effective measure to empower women in the country and the need of integrating skill development with secondary education. Labour market reforms are required to overcome challenges such as mismatch between theory and practice, low quality of skills assimilated, the mismatch between demand and supply of skilled labour force, low level of in-house training, low cooperation from students and employees due to lack of incentives and lack of qualified teachers.

This study is the first to offer a systematic literature review on skill development. The study provides insights into the concept of skill development, specifically for academicians to carry out research in a niche area and for government authorities in policy formulation.

The liberalization initiative commenced in India from 1991 onwards, replacing the four-decade long import substitution policy. The primary objective was to enhance the role of foreign and private investment, in line with the newly embraced outward-oriented growth model. The government had undertaken several policy initiatives since then, especially to strengthen the manufacturing sector which plays an important role in the economic development of any country. The current study evaluates the effects of the liberalization policy in India on industrial outcomes. Recent studies have found that when firm heterogeneity is present in trade models, reforms will lead to a decrease in the number of firms and a rise in their average size (Melitz, 2003). A dataset of 24 manufacturing industries had been used in the current study. We test empirically whether liberalization had led to a rise in the average size of establishments as stated in the literature. We also attempt to analyze the magnitude of trade costs in terms of the impact of reforms on wages and prices. The empirical analysis based on the difference-in-difference (DID) estimation method shows that on average, trade reforms do not lead to an increase in the real wages and average size of establishments. In addition, prices appear to increase in the long run due to liberalization, with potential ramifications.