Retirement gratuity is the money companies pay their employees at the end of their contracts. It is a defined benefit plan often given as an alternative to a pension plan. In Botswana, there is now a new pattern whereby companies give their employees the option to receive their gratuity at various stages before the end of their contracts. For instance, some companies give an option to receive gratuity on a monthly basis. Is this option economically sound? This paper quantifies the economic benefits of tax relief against alternative investments of monthly-received funds. The methods can be adapted to different taxations.

In this study, a genetic characterization of a SARS-CoV-2 isolates recovered in Mediterranean basin countries is presented. Phylogenetic analyses of the whole genome sequence, gene sequences and encoding products of SARS-CoV-2 isolates were carried out. The SARS-CoV-2 isolates showed that these viruses are more closely related to Bat coronavirus RaTG13 than Pangolin coronaviruses. Analyses of the sequences strongly support that multibasic S1/S2 motif acquired by recombination. Any coronavirus strain acquired this sequence becomes highly pathogenic to humans. The dominant mutation (79.3%) at S gene product level was 614D→G. Mutations in S1/S2 cleavage site have been detected in some isolates. The study suggests that these mutations play a role in virulence and infection of SARS-CoV-2.

Background and objectives: The jute yellow mite, Polyphagotarsonemus latus constitutes one of the major pests of jute crop in Bangladesh. The objective of this work was to study some morphological and histological changes of mite infested jute plant leaves. Materials and methods: Leaves and top shoot samples were collected from jute plants of different rating scales and examined under microscope for the morphological difference. Based on rating scale, leaf and top shoot, samples were collected, preserved, sectioned and examined under compound microscope (4 X 10 magnifications). Results: In the rating scale 4 showed a massive damage of leaves through leaf dropping resulting in bare shoot and shortening of internodes. Infestation rating scale 5 showed a massive damage of the shoot causing the death of the top growing part of the jute plants. Rating scale 2 showed more lesion and necrotic areas of leaf epidermis and spongy parenchyma. There occurred a massive damage of leaves especially in the abaxial epidermal and subepidermal tissues in the rating scale 3. Internal structure i.e. transverse section (TS) of shoot tip showed infested area in the cortex. Conclusion: Mite infestation was higher in lower surface than upper surface of the jute leaf. Infestation showed a massive damage of the shoot causing the death of the top growing part of the jute plants and massive damage of leaves especially in the abaxial epidermal and subepidermal tissues. Transverse section of shoot tip showed infested area in the cortex.

The main aim of this paper is to explore the dynamic relationship between the three pillars of the economy: unemployment, inflation, and GDP in Ethiopia using the continuous wavelet squared coherence (WSC) analysis, the multivariate Student-t generalized auto-regressive score (GAS) model and the autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) model. The Toda-Yamamoto (TY) causality test was also used to examine the dynamics between the three indicators. The empirical results from the WSC method suggest that unemployment, inflation, and GDP are linked, although it varies across time and frequency. The estimation results from the multivariate Student-t GAS model indicate that the correlation between unemployment and inflation is highly significant implying the correlation is dynamic. Also, the correlation between unemployment and GDP is dynamic. The results from the ARDL approach indicated that GDP was strong determinant of unemployment. Inflation was found to be significantly associated with unemployment. However, GDP is neutral to inflation in Ethiopia. More generally, the findings in this paper suggest that unemployment had a significant effect on both GDP and inflation. Therefore, the government should pursue an aggressive implementation of policies that can reduce unemployment, especially youth unemployment.

The current-voltage characteristics of Schottky diodes with the Cd1-xZnxTe / Au structure are investigated when switched on in the blocking direction. It is shown that after the complete coverage of the base of the structure with a space charge, electrons are injected from the rear contact, which determine the mechanism of charge transfer. It was found that with an increase in the degree of compensation, the lifetime of equilibrium current carriers. The structure under study Cd1-xZnxTe / Au can find application as a detector recording high-energy quanta with energies up to 1 MeV

Background. Since their early career, athletes undergo demanding training regimen to maximize their performances. It is important that training is correctly monitored so that the negative impact of the stress imposed can be assessed. In the last two decades, Heart Rate Variability (HRV) has been used as an important training monitoring tool, although literature about HRV and adaptation to training in has heterogenous results. This can be due to the variety of methods used.\nMethods. The sample of this study were 11 young national level swimmers, 8 males (12.60±0.42 years) and 3 females (12.40±0.29 years) with 3.75±0.72 years of competitive swimming. The data was obtained before and shortly after the training sessions. Time-domain and Frequency-domain data were analyzed in recordings of 1 and 5 minutes.\nResults. Before training, there were only differences in HRV indices between boys and girls in the 5 minutes recordings (p<0.01). After training, girls revealed higher values than boys in each variable (p<0.01). Girls did not reveal any correlation between any HRV parameter and training load. Boys revealed mostly small but significant correlations (p<0.05).\n Conclusions. There were no differences between recordings of 1 and 5 minutes in LnRMSSD and HF before training, which corroborates the reliability of 1-minute recordings of these variables at rest in young swimmers. After training, 1-minute recordings showed that boys and girls had a similar parasympathetic ultra-short recovery. In the 5-minutes recordings, there is a clear difference in ANS recovery between boys and girls.