The per-capita demand of fish and fish products, and paired to it, their production and trade, have substantially increased during the last few decades. For many developing countries these developments open a channel for sustainable economic progress. Against this background, this article investigates whether fish exports Granger-cause long-run economic growth of the agricultural sector (“fish export-led growth”) in a panel of eight South and Southeast Asian countries. A dynamic panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is estimated based on data for the years 2000 to 2018. The results indicate that fish exports have a significant positive impact on the growth of the agricultural sector in the long run. These findings apply to both the lower- and the upper-middle-income countries included in the analysis. Long-run Granger causality tests within a panel vector error correction model indicate that agricultural value added per worker reacts to deviations from the long-run equilibrium, whereas fish exports per worker are weakly exogenous. Thus, the paper finds supporting evidence for fish export-led growth. The paper concludes with some thoughts about how this finding can help policymakers in their attempt to induce sustainable agricultural development to eradicate poverty and to enhance living standards.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Segmental bone tissue engineering is a highly effective approach for the repair of large bone defects. In this paper, a PCL-based guide film was developed for controlling segmental bone tissue engineering. 3D bioprinting was used to fabricate the PCL/NaCl-based cylindrical films. The effects of the film's thickness and NaCl concentration on the mechanical properties, degradability, swelling behavior, porosity, and cytotoxicity of the samples were investigated. Response surface methodology was employed to study the mechanical behavior using the central composite design (CCD) results showed that increasing the NaCl concentration up to 10% wt. significantly improved the degradability, swelling, and hydrophilicity of the films. It was also indicated that the maximum stiffness of the guide films under vertical loading was almost 5 times more than the maximum stiffness in the horizontal loading direction, but the samples showed greater compressive strength and elongation under horizontal compressive loading. All the evidence indicated that the mechanical properties of the films were more dependent on the film thickness so the thicker films with an 800µm thickness had better mechanical properties in both vertical and horizontal loading. Cytotoxicity assay also approved the non-toxic effect of the PCL films on the MC3T3 osteoblast cell line. Based on the results, the PCL-based films were a suitable candidate to act as a guide for segmental bone tissue engineering.