China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) hopes to deliver trillions of dollars in infrastructure financing to Asia, Europe, and Africa. If the initiative follows Chinese practices to date for infrastructure financing, which often entail lending to sovereign borrowers, then BRI raises the risk of debt distress in some borrower countries. This paper assesses the likelihood of debt problems in the 68 countries identified as potential BRI borrowers. We conclude that eight countries are at particular risk of debt distress based on an identified pipeline of project lending associated with BRI.

Because this indebtedness also suggests a higher concentration in debt owed to official and quasi-official Chinese creditors, we examine Chinese policies and practices related to sustainable financing and the management of debt problems in borrower countries. Based on this evidence, we offer recommendations to improve Chinese policy in these areas. The recommendations are offered to Chinese policymakers directly, as well as to BRI’s bilateral and multilateral partners, including the IMF and World Bank. 

Antioxidants are derivatives of vitamin C or beta-carotene that prevent reactions stimulated by oxygen, peroxides, or free radicals, thus reducing the oxidative stress. They have found their way into many uses in treating several human diseases and reducing the risk of developing diseases like cancer. In view of this property, the present study was focussed in identifying several plants possessing antioxidative properties and which were also conserved in the ex-situ park of CSIR – Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research, Dhanbad, India. Fifteen medicinal plants including herbs, shrubs and grasses are reported in this paper, and a collective insight has been presented about their antioxidant properties and the present state of their pharmacological applications. The specific chemical constituents abundant in the leaves, roots, stems, seeds and fruits of each of these plants have also been dealt with. To report a few antioxidant pharmacological preparations from Ayurvedic literature are Vimang, Maharishi Amrit Kalash (MAK4, MAK5), Maharishi Ayurved (MA631, MA47), MA Raja’s Cup, MA Student Rasayana and MA Ladies Rasayana. This review has been attempted to enhance the importance of the plants which are generally being neglected, so that it can used by the local people in rural areas for their cultivation and it will also pave the pathway for their subsequent future use in medicinal and research industry for drug formulation.

Excessive usage of chemicals in crops, especially in leafy vegetables, caused people exposed to health and environmental risks. In Iran, spinach used as a winter vegetable that believed has high Iron and is useful for anemia. The objective of the experiment was to determine the optimum use of each macronutrients to obtain safe maximum growth and yield for scaling up among farmers. Treatments were chemical fertilizers including ammonium sulfate, triple superphosphate and potassium sulfate at 50, 100, 150 and 200 kg/h against control in a randomized complete block design. Results showed that nitrogen caused elevation of fresh and dry weight in spinach as the maximum obtained in 200 kg/h ammonium sulfate. Results obtained from effect of phosphorus showed that super phosphate increased fresh and dry weight of spinach; but potassium sulfate had no effect on its growth and yield. Analysis of variance on cross effect of data showed significant differences in fresh and dry weight, number of leaves, chlorophyll content and nitrate, and non-significant differences in length and wide of leaves.

Japan’s investment in the domestic construction industry has fallen to less than half its peak in 1992. Given the country’s declining population, Japanese construction companies must go global to remain profitable. To what extent the Japanese government and Japanese companies can contribute to meeting the growing infrastructure needs in the region is unclear as Japanese companies have long been operating primarily in Japan. The Japanese government has in recent years passed a series of new laws that encourage private sector participation in financing, building and operating public infrastructure. Through involvement in such public projects, Japanese companies have developed the skills and technologies to build a variety of infrastructures that are resilient to natural disasters and adaptable to various geographical conditions and social and economic development. But the major challenge for Japanese companies is to transform their business model drastically from one that relies on the domestic market to one that contributes to the social and economic development of third countries.

This article describes a classification tool to cluster SARAL/AltiKa waveforms. The tool was made using Python scripts. Radar altimetry systems (e.g., SARAL/AltiKa) measures the distance from the satellite centre to a target surface by calculating the satellite-to-surface round-trip time of a radar pulse. An altimeter waveform represents the energy reflected by the earth’s surface to the satellite antenna with respect to time. The tool clusters the altimetric waveforms data into desired groups. For the clustering, we used evolutionary minimize indexing function (EMIF) with k-means cluster mechanism. The idea was to develop a simple interface which takes the altimetry waveforms data from a folder as inputs and provides single value (using EMIF algorithm) for each waveform. These values are further used for clustering. This is a simple light weighted tool and user can easily interact with it.