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The experience of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) in conducting the monetary policy of the country over the years comprises a whole range of regimes. While the overall objectives of monetary policy have remained the same, policy contents – intermediate targets, choice of instruments and controls etc. – have varied considerably over the years.

Nonlinear entropy stability and a summation-by-parts framework are used to derive provably stable, polynomial-based spectral collocation element methods of arbitrary order for the compressible Navier--Stokes equations. The new methods are similar to strong form, nodal discontinuous Galerkin spectral elements but conserve entropy for the Euler equations and are entropy stable for the Navier--Stokes equations. Shock capturing follows immediately by combining them with a dissipative companion operator via a comparison approach. Smooth and discontinuous test cases are presented that demonstrate their efficacy.

SQUAMOSA Promoter Binding Protein (SBP) family genes act as central players to regulate plant growth and development with functional redundancy and specificity. Addressing the diversity of the SBP family in crops is of great significance to precisely utilize them to improve agronomic traits. Blueberry is an important economic berry crop. However, the SBP family has not been described in blueberry. In the present study, twenty VcSBP genes were identified through data mining against blueberry transcriptome databases. These VcSBPs could be clustered into eight groups, and the gene structures and motif compositions are divergent among the groups and similar within each group. The VcSBPs were differentially expressed in various tissues. Intriguingly, 10 VcSBPs were highly expressed at green fruit stages and dramatically decreased at the onset of fruit ripening, implying that they are important regulators during early fruit development. Computational analysis showed that 10 VcSBP s were targeted by miR156, and four of them were further verified by degradome sequencing. Moreover, their functional diversity was studied in Arabidopsis. Noticeably, three VcSBPs significantly increased chlorophyll accumulation, and qRT-PCR analysis indicated that VcSBP13a in Arabidopsis enhanced the expression of chlorophyll biosynthetic genes such as AtDVR, AtPORA, AtPORB, AtPORC, and AtCAO. Finally, the targets of VcSBPs were computationally identified in blueberry, and the Y1H assay showed that VcSBP13a could physically bind to the promoter region of the chlorophyll-associated gene VcLHCB1 . Our findings provided an overall framework for individually understanding the characteristics and functions of the SBP family in blueberry.

The study employs the Girton and Roper (1977) measure of exchange market pressure (defined as the sum of exchange rate depreciation and foreign reserves outflow), to examine the interaction between exchange market pressure and monetary variables, viz. domestic credit (Reserve Money) and the interest rate. Evidence from impulse response functions suggests that domestic credit has remained the dominant tool of monetary policy for managing exchange market pressure. The increase in domestic credit upon increases in exchange market pressure (during 1991-98) was imprudent. The results suggest that fiscal needs/growth objectives might have dominated external account considerations during this period. Post 9/11 there is evidence of sterilized intervention in the forex market. The interest rate has also weakly served as the tool of monetary policy during the hay days of foreign currency deposits (1991-98). The finding implies that, for the interest rate to work as tool of monetary policy vis-a-vis exchange market pressure, a reasonable degree of capital mobility is called for.

Background In the current systematic review and meta-analysis, we summarized the studies that evaluated the effects of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) intake on blood pressure among children and adolescents. Methods In a systematic search from PubMed, Scopus, Embase and Cochrane electronic databases up to 20 April 2020, the observational studies that evaluated the association between sugar-sweetened beverages intake and hypertension, systolic or diastolic blood pressure (SBP, DBP) were retrieved. Results A total of 14 studies with 93873 participants were included in the current meta-analysis. High SSB consumption was associated with 1.67 mmHg increase in SBP in children and adolescents (WMD: 1.67; CI 1.021–2.321; P < 0.001). The difference in DBP was not significant (WMD: 0.313; CI −0.131– 0.757; P = 0.108). High SSB consumers were 1.36 times more likely to develop hypertension compared with low SSB consumers (OR: 1.365; CI 1.145–1.626; P = 0.001). In dose–response meta-analysis, no departure from linearity was observed between SSB intake and change in SBP (P-nonlinearity = 0.707) or DBP (P-nonlinearity = 0.180). Conclusions According to our finding, high SSB consumption increases SBP and hypertension in children and adolescents.

In this edition of Editors' Newsroom, we take a look behind the scenes of the copyediting process with an interview of Senior Copyeditor, Sarah Krivan. Managing Editor, Alex Cheyne, asks what authors can expect from this stage of manuscript publication, and we get Sarah's tips for authors to take advantage of the comprehensive in-house support.

Nowadays social media is widely used as the source of information because of its low cost, easy to access nature. However, consuming news from social media is a double-edged sword because of the wide propagation of fake news, i.e., news with intentionally false information. Fake news is a serious problem because it has negative impacts on individuals as well as society large. In the social media the information is spread fast and hence detection mechanism should be able to predict news fast enough to stop the dissemination of fake news. Therefore, detecting fake news on social media is an extremely important and also a technically challenging problem. In this paper, we present FakeNewsTracker, a system for fake news understanding and detection. As we will show, FakeNewsTracker can automatically collect data for news pieces and social context, which benefits further research of understanding and predicting fake news with effective visualization techniques.

Salinity is one of the major abiotic stress factors limiting rice production. Glabrousness is a trait of agronomic importance in rice (Oryza sativa L.). We previously found a single-gene recessive mutant sst, which displayed increased salt tolerance and glabrous leaf and glume without trichomes, and identified an SBP-box gene OsSPL10 as the candidate of the SST gene. In this study, OsSPL10-knockout and OsSPL10-overexpression mutants were created to check the function of the gene. The knockout mutants exhibited enhanced salt tolerance and glabrous leaves and glumes as expected, while the overexpression mutants showed opposite phenotypes, in which both salt sensitivity and trichome density on leaf and glume were increased. These results clearly confirmed that OsSPL10 is SST, and suggested that OsSPL10 controls the initiation rather than the elongation of trichomes. In addition, expression analysis indicated that OsSPL10 was preferentially expressed in young panicle and stem, and protein OsSPL10 was localized in nucleus. Taken together, OsSPL10 negatively controls salt tolerance but positively controls trichome formation in rice.

In this edition of Editors' Newsroom, Associate Editor Dr. Ana Stojanov considers how generative artificial intelligence is being used in academic writing. Keywords editors' newsroom, SBP, generative artificial intelligence, academic writing

The ( promoter binding protein-like) gene family is one of the plant-specific transcription factor families and controls a considerable number of biological functions, including floral development, phytohormone signaling, and toxin resistance. However, the evolutionary patterns and driving forces of genes in the genus are still not well-characterized. In this study, we investigated a total of 105 genes from six AA genome representative species ( , , and ). Phylogenetic and motif analyses indicated that proteins could be divided into two distinct lineages (I and II), and further studies showed lineage II consisted of three clades (IIA, IIB, and IIC). We found that clade I had comparable structural features with clade IIA, whereas genes in clade IIC displayed intrinsic differences, such as lower exon numbers and the presence of miR156 regulation elements. Nineteen orthologous groups of s in were also identified, and most exons within those genes maintained constant length, whereas length of intron changed relatively. All groups were constrained by stronger purifying selection and diversified continually including alterative gene number, intron length, and miR156 regulation. Subsequently, -acting element analyses revealed the potential role of s in wild rice, which might participate in light-responsive, phytohormone response, and plant growth and development. Our results shed light on that different evolutionary rates and duplication events might result in divergent evolutionary patterns in each lineage of genes, providing a guide in exploring diverse function in the rice gene family among six closely related species.