Biotechnology

In the context of Africa's struggle against global trade regimes and their governance, this paper examines how the exercise of intellectual property rights on biopharma-ceutical products, such as antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), results in a clash of interests between national governments and pharmaceutical companies. It is contended that these conflicts produce serious effects on public health, especially in developing African countries. The clash between the South African government and major pharmaceutical companies over ARVs, in 1998 and 2001, was examined based on theories of labour and the nature of ideas. Data for the study was collected through documentary analysis methodology and used to examine the positions of South Africa, as a Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement signatory, and those of pharmaceutical companies, as non-state actors. Following a deconstruction of the main arguments of pharmaceutical companies , a conclusion is drawn to the effect that divergent interests and objectives pursued by the parties concerned are the major cause of the conflict. Furthermore, ambiguous provisions in the TRIPS Agreement also complicate the problem. On the basis of this, this paper calls for a re-examination of the TRIPS Agreement, as a whole, as well as unity of purpose among African countries in confronting inequality and unfairness implicit in global trade regimes.

Taking into account the economic importance of Acer species and their frequent use in landscape architecture, both nationally and internationally, it is necessary to develop an in vitro biotechnology research to propagate some of the most popular and requested Acer varieties. The study presents data on the partial results of in vitro initiation for two varieties of Acer platanoides: 'Globosum' and 'Crimson King'. During the initiation phase, Acer platanoides 'Globosum' showed the best initiation percentage, using the next nutrient composition: MS macroelements, MS microelements, MS vitamins, auxins/citokinine 0.2:1 mg/l, while Acer platanoides 'Crimson King' variety recorded the best results on the nutrient medium with a different composition: MS macroelements, MS microelements, LF vitamins and auxins/citokinine 0.4:1.2 mg/l. Keywords: Acer platanoides‚Globosum, Acer platanoides ‚Crimson King', maple, in vitro culture, explants Cuvinte cheie: Acer platanoides ‚Globosum', Acer platanoides ‚Crimson King', arţar, cultură in vitro, explante

The 21st century has witnessed precipitous changes spanning from the way of life to the technologies that emerged. We have entered anascent paradigmshift(industry 4.0) where sciencefictions have becomescience facts, and technologyfusion is the main driver.us, ensuring that any advancement intechnologyreach andbenefitall istheideal opportunity foreveryone.In thisstudy, disruptive technologies of industry 4.0 were explored and quantified in terms of the number of their appearances in published literature.e study aimed at identifying industry 4.0 key technologies which have been ill-defined by previous researchers and to enumerate the required skills of industry 4.0. Comprehensive literature survey covering the field of engineering, production, and management was done in multidisciplinary databases: Google Scholar, Science Direct, Scopus, Sage, Taylor & Francis, and Emerald Insight. From the electronic survey, 35 disruptive technologies were quantified and 13 key technologies: Internet ofings, Big Data, 3D printing, Cloud computing, Autonomous robots, Virtual and Augmented reality, Cyber-physical system, Artificial intelligence, Smart sensors, Simulation, Nanotechnology, Drones, and Biotechnology were identified. Both technical and personal skills to be imparted into the human workforce for industry 4.0 were reported. e review identified the need to investigate the capability and the readiness of developing countries in adapting industry 4.0 in terms of the changes in the education systems and industrial manufacturing settings. is study proposes the need to address the integration of industry 4.0 concepts into the current education system.

This article documents the files format conversion procedures for eight different genotype file formats using existing tools like Plink, Samtools, Gtools, and custom code script where necessary. It provides documentation and the corresponding code segment for each conversion to serve conversion procedures in a plate to beginners and researchers to build on top of the existing code to develop enhanced and fast conversion procedures. The code is written in Python and GNU commands, enabling deployment from general-purpose computers to high-performance computing setups. In addition, the documentation is written in the form of the tutorial, highlighting the reason for using a particular step in the conversion procedure and its effect on intermediate genotype data, ultimately enhancing the comprehension abilities of people struggling with file conversion when developing their pipelines for the analysis. In the first version of the documentation, we considered eight file formats: VCF, BED-BIM-FAM, PED-MAP, GEN-SAMPLE, RAW, HAPS-LEGEND-SAMPLE, 23andme, and AncestryDNA.