Category: English Reports

The human body contains 70% water, which is present within every single cell in the body. Water is an essential building block for all organisms. However, not everybody is fortunate enough to have access to clean water. Children in developing countries die due to either lack of access to water or drinking contaminated water. According to UNICEF, 760,000 children died in 2011 along from consuming contaminated water. And according to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, 768 million people live on unimproved water, a type of water containing high levels of pathogens and thus unsafe for drinking.

Risk factors in normal childhood include poor water, sanitation, and hygiene. A major health implication of drinking dirty water is contracting diarrheal diseases such as cholera and environmental enteropathy. Both chronic diarrhea and enteropathy cause stunted growth, both physical and mental, due to poor nutrition absorption, and therefore they are detrimental to young children. Environmental enteropathy leads to chronic anemia and growth failure in children. Therefore, children not just experience stunted growth and diarrhea but also face iron deficiency. Further, children drinking contaminated water are exposed to roundworm, hookworm, lymphatic filariasis, Hepatitis A, B, E and F, jaundice, and typhoid, some of which are lethal to children.

Some key solutions to this urgent problem include piped water, privatized water supply, and in-house water treatment, but these are difficult to achieve in developing countries, the countries that need such solutions the most. In this regard, there is an urgent need to come with cheap but effective solutions to keep children away from dirty drinking water.

Y.S. Hong

Human Trafficking in Asia

Ma Yuge

Behind the economic success of developing countries in Asia lurks many unresolved social issues. One of the most serious social issues facing the world today is human trafficking, particularly that entailing force labor and sexual abuse. This is probably the most terrible of all human rights violations. Human trafficking knows no limits in terms of age and gender, and victims are often from low-income or otherwise helpless families.

Unfortunately, some cases of human trafficking appear to be taken for granted because of the extreme difficulty in addressing the problem and punishing the culprits. And whenever victims are rescued by the authorities, the cause is usually assigned to financial problems. Here the sad reality is that some are directly given to human traffickers by their guardians in exchange for money. As a result, they end up completely destroyed both physically and psychologically, having lost their confidence and self-worth and thus becoming hopeless. This is why many victims have difficulty getting back to a normal life.

There are also victims who are relegated to a life of slave labor and no pay. Most such victims also come from poor families in rural areas, but they generally start wishing to earn a lot of money to support their families, thereby taking the risk to work away from their home and even in a foreign country. Here a lack of education and awareness plays a role. Because many cannot evaluate the risks appropriately as a result of their lack of education and understanding, they may jump at an “opportunity” that often turns out to be a trap. And many times young people are lured into forced labor because of naive expectations, leading to child labor in many poor countries in Asia. Because they lack voice, they are likely to be the worst victims of human trafficking and become handicapped.

It is certainly alarming how human trafficking has become such a serious problem in society today, affecting people of all ages and backgrounds. Human trafficking is a critical social issue in Asia, and the weight of its consequences must be borne by not only the victims but also the rest of society as well. Although much effort is being made to address this issue, more is clearly needed.

The world is ageing slowly and as we look around us we see a population of 65 and above on the rise around us, especially in developing countries and it won’t be long before the developed countries too catch up on this feature. Ageing population is where the proportion of older people is high within the total population. As the number steadily increases, the world is expected to see a rise in people above the age group of 65 and more, accelerating the numbers old people in the society. As the world sees a rise in the ageing population the responsible to make them live in the society with dignity and security is also a challenge to all the countries.
The ageing population is expected to be more than children between 0 -14 years in the next five years. Women outlive men most of the times but this gender gap is expected to decrease in the developed countries and increase in developing countries. Ageing affects all types of societies; the rich and the poor in different ways. The global life expectancy have been on the rise because of improved hygiene, better communication, healthy diets, socioeconomic development, and advancement of science and technology. Though there are a lot of problems due to the ageing population in the society, it can also be looked at as a success in the history of mankind.

A lot of changes need to be incorporated into the existing society to make living comfortable for this ageing population. And there is a need to change a lot of social reforms in the society to fit in these older persons. They need to be kept in the labor markets for a longer period of time and the retirement age should be increased. Good healthcare will also prevent diseases connected with old age. Special attention needs to be given to their basic needs like housing, health, social services, and pension schemes which can make them lead healthy and comfortable lives.

L.K. Lee

Abstract
Telemarketing has become a popular marketing tool. In a financial crisis, credit may contract in domestic and international markets, forcing banks to turn to customer deposits, including term deposits, as a source of additional funds. In addition, loans are a main source of income for banks. Therefore, a bank manager’s key responsibility is to attract term deposits and generate loans. Here direct marketing enables banks to reach customers who are likely to make deposits and take loans, so identifying such customer groups is a major challenge for banks. Using the proposed model, a bank manager can better conduct direct marketing campaigns and achieve greater customer satisfaction. A machine learning model is built to predict the success rate of bank telemarketing in identifying valued customers. This work describes a data mining approach to extracting valuable information from a dataset from a recent Portuguese bank telemarketing campaign obtained from the UCI KDD Machine Learning Datasets. To validate prediction accuracy, the proposed model is compared with popular classification models including Naïve Bayes, SVM and Decision Tree. All experiments are implemented in WEKA. The experimental results provide useful insights for strengthening banks both financially and functionally.

Yuejun Sun, Xinru Cheng, Haiming Li, Yuwen Lin, Joohwan Sung, Anlan Wang