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Background Child malnutrition still remains a major cause of childhood morbidity and mortality in Bangladesh. This study aims to determine the prevalence and identify the associated risk factors of child malnutrition in Bangladesh using multilevel logistic regression model on data from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS), 2014. Methods A total sample of 6965 children aged 0–59 months was extracted from BDHS 2014. We performed descriptive analysis and multilevel generalized linear regression analysis with clustered data structure. Results Our findings show that among children the prevalence of moderate and severe values was respectively: 25 and 12% for stunting; 11 and 3.1% for wasting; 25 and 7.9% for underweight. The probability of stunting increased with age, with highest rate among children aged 36–47 months, which was significantly higher than children aged less than 6 months (OR = 6.71, 95% CI = 4.46, 10.10). Female children are found to be 11% less likely to be stunted than male children (OR = 0.89, 95% CI = 0.78, 1.02). Children with birth interval less than 24 months were significantly more likely to be stunted than children of first birth by 36% (OR = 1.36, 95% CI = 1.11, 1.67). Mothers with a normal BMI were 16% less likely to have children with stunting compared to mothers who are underweight (OR = 0.84, 95% CI = 0.76, 0.93). Other factors which were associated with a higher risk of stunting included parents with lower educational levels, children from the poorest wealth index, and mothers aged less than 20 years as first birth. Conclusion Government and non-government organization should generate effective program to aware women of reproductive age about adverse effect of short birth interval, and to aware parents about standard height and weight according to age and gender of children. Overall, necessary steps may be taken to make people educated and to reduce household wealth inequality to improve nutritional status of children.

In this paper, security enhanced image steganography is described. To enhance the security, cryptographic algorithm, Modified RSA in its symmetric form, is used to encrypt the message into cipher text and vice versa. The sender will encrypt the message with a key and then embed the cipher text into an image and send the image object via any transmission medium like internet along with the key to the receiver, so that the receiver can extract the cipher text from the image and then decrypt by the key that the sender have sent. The result was satisfactory and fulfilled the purpose but there arose many major issues like, visibility of the cipher pixel in case for lower resolution image; data corruption of the cipher text due to noise; limitation of grayscale image only; sender have to send a couple of image for comparison of the pixel data etc. However, noise problem have been challenged with the help of median filter but still there remains many scope to establish this algorithm into an efficient and optimized one.

With the rapid development of IoT devices, the information from the environment now can easily be collected and accumulated to provide useful services to the end users. In traditional transit system, the passenger waits for the arrival of the bus, but there is no assurance of seat. Sometimes, the bus is full of passengers, and the passenger needs to travel standing. If the travel time is higher, then the passenger’s comfort is jeopardized during the travel from the source location to the destination. Alternatively, the passenger cannot know on the fly whether a little more waiting may ensure a seat in the next available transport. So, an efficient method is needed to ensure the seat in a transport facility along the passenger’s trip. This paper introduces a transit matching method that finds transport with a consideration of the passenger’s satisfaction.

Surface texturization is a route to improving the efficiency of silicon solar cells by enhancing their light trapping ability. In this paper, solar-grade, monocrystalline, unpolished, silicon wafers were chemically processed via different routes before texturization. The effect of this pre-texturization processing on the morphological evolution with corresponding changes in optical properties has been systematically studied with a scanning electron microscope, atomic force microscope, and UV-Vis spectrophotometer. It has been found that the uniformity and size distribution of pyramid structures, as well as the reflectance of the textured surfaces, depend on the pre-textured chemical processing. Moreover, it has also been found that etching the oxide layer with HF prior to texturization does not affect the optical properties of textured silicon substrates.

Multimedia applications (including those in eHealth scenarios) can require on-demand and urgent resource provisioning in cloud environments. Provisioning in clouds, the virtual machines (VMs) assignment to physical machines (PMs), is critical to obtaining efficiency for the cloud provider and also to ensuring the overall satisfaction of cloud users. Provisioning algorithms are often divided into batch and online algorithms where the former gather VM allocation requests and then efficiently pack them as a group and the latter place VMs immediately upon receiving requests. The underlying tradeoff is one of efficiency in packing (leading to lower cost for the cloud provider) vs. greater responsiveness to requests (which is important to some cloud applications). In this paper, we propose and show the effectiveness of a new static hybrid algorithm for provisioning that groups and optimizes normal VM requests but immediately places more urgent requests.

Background Ganzi Prefecture in Western China is situated geographically at the transition regions between Tibetan Plateau and Sichuan Basin in a highly tectonically active boundary area between the India and Eurasia plates. The region hosts various hot springs that span a wide range of temperature from 30 to 98 °C and are located at high altitude (up to 4200 m above sea level) in the region of large geothermal anomalies and active Xianshuihe slip-fault that has been active since Holocene. The site represents a biodiversity reservoir for thermophiles, yet their diversity and relationship to geochemical parameters are largely unknown. In the present work, bacterial diversity and community structure in 14 hot springs of Ganzi were investigated using Illumina MiSeq sequencing. Results Bacterial community compositions were evidently distinct among the 14 hot springs, and the bacterial communities in hot springs were majorly abundant in phyla Aquificae, Cyanobacteria and Proteobacteria. Both clustering and PCoA analysis suggested the existence of four bacterial community patterns in these hot springs. Temperature contributed to shaping bacterial community structure of hot springs as revealed by correlation analysis. Abundant unassigned-genus sequences detected in this study strongly implied the presence of novel genera or genetic resources in these hot springs. Conclusion The diversity of hot springs of Ganzi prefecture in Western Sichuan, China is evidently shaped by temperature. Interestingly disproportionally abundant unassigned-genus sequences detected in this study show indicate potential of novel genera or phylotypes. We hypothesize that frequent earthquakes and rapidly changing environment might have contributed to evolution of these potentially new lineages. Overall, this study provided first insight into the bacterial diversity of hot springs located in Western Sichuan, China and its comparison with other similar communities worldwide. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12866-018-1271-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Keyphrases are single or multiple word phrases of a document which portrays the principal points of that document. These keyphrases help readers to get an overview of the document. In this paper, we proposed a system that uses Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) to automatically detect keyphrases from a document. We also implemented Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) network to compare the performance of our proposed LSTM approach. We applied several pre-processing steps on a document to generate the candidate keyphrases. Finally, we found better performance from our proposed approach with compared to the MLP network.

Background: Obesity is a complex, severe and chronic disease that can have an unenthusiastic effect on many systems in human body. In traditional medication, many medicinal plants have been used to treat obesity. The aim of the present study is to present medicinal plants which are available in Bangladesh that proved their anti-obesity activities have been. Method: Bibliographic study was carried out by analyzing conventional text books and peer reviewed papers, consulting wide-reaching accepted scientific databases. In this review, the investigation terms were “obesity” in addition to (“herbal medicine” or “plant”, “medicinal plants” or “medicine traditional”) with no limiting search objects. Later it was cross checked whether the plants were available in the country or not from the Bangladeshi online medicinal plants databases. Findings: More than 100 plants have anti-obesity potentiality; however, only 23 species are available in Bangladesh. The plants are: Achyranthes aspera Linn, Acorus calamus Linn, Aegle marmelos Linn, Allium cepa Linn, Allium sativum Linn, Bombax ceiba L., Coccinia grandis (L.) Voigt, Cucumis melo L., Hibiscus sabdariffa L., Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam, Morus alba L., Murraya koenigii (L.) Spreng, Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn, Phaseolus vulgaris L., Punica granatum L., Senna siamea (Lam.) H.S.Irwin & Barneby, Shorea robusta Gaertn, Solanum lycopersicum L., Syzygium aromaticum (L.) Merr. & L.M.Perry, Tamarindus indica L., Zingiber officinale Roscoe, Moringa oleifera and Citrus limon (L.). Conclusion: There are a lot of plants in Bangladesh which seem to be a safe treatment source for obesity control. Further researches are recommended to evaluate this potentiality for presenting effective and safe drugs for obesity in the market.

The genetic diversity of marine benthic dinoflagellate strains morphologically identified as Moestrupia oblonga from the coastal areas of Okinawa Island, Japan, were investigated. All strains shared similar morphologies, such as unarmored cells with a rice grain-like shape, the cingulum displacing about one third of the body length, a distinctive ventral flange, and a conspicuous central pyrenoid, while the nucleus was positioned in the hypocone, conforming to the general morphology of M. oblonga (Larsen and Patterson) Hansen and Daugbjerg from Tenerife, Canary Island, Spain. Molecular phylogenetic analyses based on LSU rDNA D1-D3 and the concatenated dataset of SSU-ITS1-5.8S-ITS2-LSU rDNA sequences indicated that all strains are monophyletic, but separated into three genetically distinct clades; namely, Clade A, B, and C. Intraclade sequence divergence in the respective clades was less than 0.3 % for all molecular markers, excluding the ITS1-5.8S rDNA-ITS2 region of Clade B and Clade C that showed sequence divergence of 0.7 % and 1.75 % among its members, respectively. The mean interclade divergences between clades were about 1.2–3.7 % in SSU rDNA, but reached 18–26 % and 6.3–9.7 % for nucleotides in ITS and LSU rDNA sequences, respectively. Despite the link between the three Okinawan clades and M. oblonga (JF272764) from Spain showing close affinity in LSU rDNA D1-D3 phylogeny, they diverged about 7.5–12 % regarding base pairs from this sole representative of the genus. Moreover, the formation of these clades was somewhat consistent with morphological differentiation based on cell sizes, indicating that these clades may represent three pseudo-cryptic species in the genus, discreet from M. oblonga from Tenerife, Spain. This study reveals that the genus Moestrupia is much more complex than previous reports have suggested.

Introduction: Short segment pedicle screw fixation is a popular procedure for treating unstable thoracolumbar burst fracture. But due to lack of adequate neurological improvement, progressive kyphosis and hardware failure- the efficacy of different methods remain debatable. Method : 50 patients with isolated thoracolumbar burst fractures were treated by short segment pedicle screw fixation and transforaminal thoracolumbar inter body fusion (TLIF) between January 2010 to December 2013. All patients were followed up for a minimum 2 years. Demographic data, Neurological improvement (Frankel) grade and Hardware failure related complication were evaluated. Results: All patients recovered with solid bony fusion by inter vertebral bone graft and pedicle screw without complications like misplacement of screw, nerve or vessel lesion or hardware failure. The post-operative radiographic demonstration reveals- good fracture reduction and it was well maintained until the bone graft fusion. Neurological recovery of the one to three Frankel grade was seen in 42 patients with partial neurological deficit. Among the 30 patients 3 grade improvements was seen in 4 patients, 2 grade of improvement was observed in 20 patients and 1 grade of improvement was found in 18 patients. 3 patients with Franke-D on admission showed no improvement. 5 patients with no paraplegia/hemiplegia on admission remained neurological intact. Conclusion: Posterior short segment pedicle fixation in conjunction with TLIF seems to be a feasible option in the management of selected thoracolumbar burst fracture with good neurological improvement. Bangladesh Journal of Neuroscience 2015; Vol. 31 (1): 30-33

Since the success of the Mars Pathfinder, a new chapter of space exploration began focusing on reducing the complexity of the rover and making it more autonomous, multifunctional, lightweight even at extreme adversities. A student based design for a competition allowed the researchers in this paper to explore a design that would meet those requirements. This paper presents the design of a six wheeled, triangular shaped chassis, having multi suspension based rover. This rover is integrated with a 2.4GHz communication system that not only allows the rover to be operated from a distance of 1km, but also allows the researchers to collect soil samples and test them on board the rover using a Microlab box. The rover also shows superior maneuverability by being able to turn 360° on the spot and able to scale obstacles of almost 1 feet. The performance of the design was also tested at a global competition — University Rover Challenge 2016 organized by The Mars Society held at Utah, USA, where this design came in 8th for the Phobos category. This competition only invited 30 rovers out of the 63 that applied from 12 different countries.

Aim To determine the safety and effectiveness of biphasic insulin aspart 30 (BIAsp 30) therapy in Bangladeshi type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients switched from biphasic human insulin (BHI) as a sub-analysis of the A 1 chieve study. Methods Bangladeshi patients switched from BHI to BIAsp 30 at the discretion of their physicians were included. The primary outcome was the incidence of serious adverse drug reactions (SADRs), including major hypoglycaemia. Secondary outcomes comprised changes from baseline to Week 24 in the number of hypoglycaemic events, glycated haemoglobin A 1c (HbA 1c ), fasting plasma glucose (FPG), postprandial plasma glucose (PPPG), systolic blood pressure and body weight. Quality of life (QoL) was evaluated at baseline and Week 24 using the EQ-5D questionnaire. Results A total of 82 patients (mean age ± SD: 52.3±12.2 years; body mass index: 25.6±3.3kg/m 2 ) with a mean diabetes duration of 9.5±5.5 years and mean duration on insulin of 2.5±2.4 years were included. The mean BIAsp 30 dose was 0.49±0.20 U/kg at baseline and 0.47±0.17 U/kg at Week 24. No SADRs were reported. No events of hypoglycaemia (overall, major, minor or nocturnal) were reported at Week 24. Mean HbA 1c , FPG and PPPG levels improved by –2.5±1.3%, –65.0±31.8 mg/dL and –119.3±48.7 mg/dL, respectively, over 24 weeks. QoL also improved (mean change from baseline: +28.5±12.9 points). Conclusion Switching from BHI to BIAsp 30 therapy improved blood glucose control and was well-tolerated in this Bangladeshi subgroup.

Marine microalgae are a promising source of organisms that can be cultured and targeted to isolate the broad spectrum of functional metabolites. In this study, two species of cyanobacteria, Chlorella ovalis Butcher and Nannchloropsis oculata Droop, one species of bacillariophyta, Phaeoductylum tricornutum Bohlin, and one species of Dinophyceae, Amphidinium carterae (Hulburt) were cultured and biomasses used to evaluate the proximate comical compositions. Among the determined proximate chemical compositions of the cultured marine microalgae, the highest content of crude proteins and lipids were exhibited in P. tricornutum and A. carterae, respectively. Solvent-solvent partition chromatography was subjected to fractionate each of the cultured species and separated n-hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate, and aqueous fractions. Nitric oxide production inhibitory level (%) and cytotoxicity effect on lipo-polysaccharide–induced RAW 264.7 macrophages were performed to determine the anti-inflammatory activity. N. oculata hexane and chloroform fractions showed significantly the strongest anti-inflammatory activity at 6.25 µg mL -1 concentration. The cancer cell growth inhibition (%) was determined on three different cell lines including HL-60 (a human promyelocytic leukemia cell line), A549 (a human lung carcinoma cell line), and B16F10 (a mouse melanoma cell line), respectively. Among the extracts, C. ovalis ethyl acetate and A. carterae chloroform fractions suppressed the growth of HL-60 cells significantly at 25 and 50 µg mL-1 concentrations. Thus, the cultured marine microalgae solvent extracts may have potentiality to isolate pharmacologically active metabolites further using advance chromatographic steps. Hence, the cultured marine microalgae can be described as a good candidate for the future therapeutic uses.

Many species of microalgae have been used as source of nutrient rich food, feed and health promoting compounds. Among the commercially important microalgae, Haematococcus pluvialis is the richest source of natural astaxanthin which is considered as “super anti-oxidant". Natural astaxanthin produced by H. pluvialis has significantly greater antioxidant capacity than the synthetic one. Astaxanthin has important applications in the nutraceuticals, cosmetics, food, and aquaculture industries. Thanks to many researches it is now evident, that astaxanthin can significantly reduce free radicals and oxidative stress and help human body maintain a healthy state. With extraordinary potency and increase in demand, astaxanthin is one of the high-value microalgal products of the future. Thus, this comprehensive review summarizes the most important aspects of the biology, biochemical composition, biosynthesis and astaxanthin accumulation in the cells of H. pluvialis and its wide range of applications for humans and animals. In this paper, important and recent developments ranging from cultivation, harvest and postharvest bio-processing technologies to metabolic control and genetic engineering are reviewed in detail, focusing on biomass and astaxanthin production from this biotechnologically important microalga. Simultaneously, critical bottlenecks and major challenges in commercial scale production; current and prospective global market of H. pluvialis derived astaxanthin are also presented in a critical manner. A new biorefinery concept for H. pluvialis has been also suggested to guide towards economically sustainable approach for microalgae cultivation and processing. This report could serve as a useful guide to present current status of knowledge in the field and highlight key areas for future development of H. pluvialis astaxanthin technology and its large scale commercial implementation.

In this study, metal pollution and their sources in surface soils were evaluated by pollution indices and multivariate statistical techniques in association with a geographical information system (GIS). Surface soil samples were collected in dry season from different locations of Dhaka Aricha highway and analyzed by energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF). Thirteen different metals were found in the tested samples. Pollution indices are determined by enrichment factor in an order of Zr > Sn > P > Mn > Zn > Rb > Fe > Ba > Sr > Ti > K > Ca > Al. The resulting geoaccumulation index (I geo) value shows the following order: Sn > Zr > P > Mn > Zn > Rb > Fe > Ba > Ti > Sr > K > Ca > Al. Contamination factors (CFs) of the metals range from 1.422 to 3.979 (Fe); 0.213 to 1.089 (Al); 0.489 to 3.484 (Ca); 1.496 to 2.372 (K); 1.287 to 3.870 (Ti); 2.200 to 14.588 (Mn); 5.938 to 56.750 (Zr); 0.980 to 3.500 (Sr); 2.321 to 4.857 (Rb); 2.737 to 6.526 (Zn); 16.667 to 27.333 (Sn); 3.157 to 16.286 (P); and 0.741 to 3.328 (Ba). Pollution load index calculated from the CFs indicates that soils are strongly contaminated by Zr and Sn. Principal component analysis (PCA) of parameters exhibits three major components. R-mode cluster analysis reveals three distinct groups in both site and metal basis clustering that shows a similar pattern with the PCA. These results might be helpful for future monitoring of further increase of heavy metal concentrations in surface soils along highways.

The analysis of cutting forces plays an important role in the design of machine tool systems as well as in the planning, optimization, and control of micro machining processes. Several parameters influence the cutting forces of which the friction is important in causing premature tool failure. This paper presents a force model that includes the friction force for sliding due to the contact between the tool and workpiece at the flank face. Simulation results were compared with the experimental results of Bao and Tansel [1] showing that the model can satisfactorily represent the cutting forces in two dimensional cutting.

The present study was carried out to monitor the plankton community structure and productivity, its diurnal and seasonal variations and the influence of physico-chemical factors in the Shibsha River of the southwest coast of Bangladesh from July 2004 to June 2005. A total of 31 phytoplankton species were identified; 17 belong to Bacillariophyceae, seven to Cyanophyceae, five to Chlorophyceae and two to Dinophyceae. Bacillariophyceae appeared to be the dominant group in terms of total species and cell numbers during the period studied. The over all phytoplankton production was significantly (p< 0.05) higher in June (175.8x103 cells L-1) and lower in September (12.0x103 cells L-1) attributed to low temperature. Phytoplankton diversity declined to the lowest level in winter and there was a positive correlation with water temperature. The number of phytoplankton species was high (26) in June and quite low (11) in December. Nutrient concentrations including nitrate and phosphate were significantly (p< 0.05) higher in summer, while lower values recorded in winter. The lowest and highest concentration of Nitrate-Nitrogen (NO3-N) and Phosphate-Phosphorus (PO4-P) were 0.7, 0.3, 1.9 and 0.9 mg-1, respectively.

Photovoltaic system and wind power are the bright future of hybrid distributed renewable power generation for dreaming a decontaminated green world. Modern world's enhanced commercial activities and rapid industrialization are increasing the peak of electricity demand in a significant way. Integration of battery operated vehicles and upgraded automation technologies to conventional power systems are also consuming large amount of power from grids. On the verge of producing clean energy, the civilized world has all the reasons to generate power from hybrid power systems. Coping with the technological advancement and obsolescence, Bangladesh is also progressing to extract power from existing renewable energy resources and their integration to the national grid. To assist country's distributed generation plan, installation of photovoltaic-wind power based hybrid systems with charging facility for Electric vehicles in major stadiums in Bangladesh is proposed in this paper. Cost analysis is executed in HOMER. Proposals validity and usefulness both are also explicitly discussed.

Background Syzygium jambos has been used as a traditional medicine for the treatment of inflammatory diseases in Bangladesh. The study investigates the high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) profiling of phenolic compounds, and evaluates the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities of ethanol extract of S. jambos available in Bangladesh. Methods The extract was subjected to HPLC for the identification and quantification of the major bioactive polyphenols present in S. jambos. Antioxidant activity was determined using 2, 2′-azino bis-3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid (ABTS) radical scavenging, reducing power assay, total antioxidant capacity, total phenolic and flavonoid content. Furthermore, the anti-inflammatory effect of the extract in rats for two different test models: carrageenan and histamine-induced paw edema was inspected. Results High levels of catechin hydrate and rutin hydrate (99.00 and 79.20 mg/100 g extract, respectively) and moderate amounts of ellagic acid and quercetin (59.40 and 69.30 mg/100 g extract, respectively) were quantified in HPLC. Catechin hydrate from this plant extract was determined for the first time through HPLC. For ABTS scavenging assay, the median inhibition concentration (IC50) value of S. jambos was 57.80 µg/ml, which was significant to that of ascorbic acid (12.01 µg/ml). The maximum absorbance for reducing power assay was found to be 0.4934. The total antioxidant capacity, phenolic and flavonoid contents were calculated to be 628.50 mg/g of ascorbic acid, 230.82 mg/g of gallic acid and 11.84 mg/g of quercetin equivalent, respectively. At a dose of 400 mg/kg, a significant acute anti-inflammatory activity (P

Potato extract (PE), corn extract (CE) and papaya extract (PAE) significantly enhanced plantlet regeneration from PLBs (protocorm-like bodies) when 50 mL L - 1 of an extract was supplemented to the New Phalaenopsis (NP) medium containing sucrose. Among the treatments, CE 50 mL L - 1 induced the highest rate (66.63%) of plantlet regeneration from PLBs. Organic extracts of potato, corn and papaya at 50-100 mL L - 1 in NP medium also enhanced the subsequent growth of mini-plantlets. However, a higher level (200 mL L - 1 ) of extract in the medium inhibited the growth of the plantlets. Among these extracts, PE at 100 mL L - 1 showed the optimum effect on the acceleration of shoot growth while CE at the same concentration was optimum for root growth.

Potato extract (PE), corn extract (CE) and papaya extract (PAE) at concentrations of 25, 50 and 100 mL L - 1 enhanced callus growth on New Phalaenopsis (NP) medium containing sucrose. Among the various concentrations, 100mL L - 1 PE or PAE and 200 mL L - 1 CE significantly promoted callus growth compared to the control. Regeneration of protocorm-like bodies (PLBs) from calli was optimum when NP medium (sometimes referred to as BM) was supplemented with 100 mL L - 1 CE, followed by PE and PAE at the same concentration. Most plantlets also regenerated from PLBs with one 100 mL L - 1 CE.

Mobile on-demand videos are getting tremendously popular and incurring staggering overhead on cellular net-works. Fortunately, next generation cellular networks support video streaming over either unicast or multicast, but how to capitalize both unicast and multicast for optimal on-demand video streaming remains an open question. In this paper, we consider a resource allocation problem that concurrently utilizes unicast/multicast in order to support many more mobile streaming users and minimize the energy consumption of the battery-powered mobile devices. We formulate this problem as a Binary Integer Programming (BIP) problem. We present an optimal algorithm, SCOPT, for this problem. We also develop an efficient heuristic algorithm, SCG, for lower overhead. We conduct detailed packet-level simulations to evaluate the algorithms in LTE networks using OPNET. Our simulation study shows that the proposed algorithms: (i) result in lower energy consumption than multicast-only approach, (ii) scale to many more mobile users than unicast-only approach, and (iii) are more energy efficient with more network bandwidth or fewer videos. In addition, we discuss how our solution can be extended to support Single Frequency Networks in which multiple adjacent base stations operate on the same frequency.

Background: Teenage pregnancy comprises 24.2 percent of the total pregnancies of Bangladesh, which is a great threat to the overall health of the country. In Bangladesh, a large number of young women migrate to urban areas for work and most of them live in slum areas. This study aims at shedding light on the factors that contribute to the incidence of pregnancy among the women before reaching the age 18 in slum areas. Methods: This study is based on primary data, and a total of 522 samples were sorted out from the total 609 interviewed ever married women. These 609 respondents were interviewed using purposive sampling technique. Both bivariate and multivariate analytical techniques have been applied to analyze the data. Results: Result shows that as much as about 83.7 percent respondents were found to be married before reaching age 18, and 79 percent conceived before age 18. Incidence of early conception decreases with the increase in the education of respondents and in the education of their husbands. Respondents—with higher family income, and who have ever used family planning are less likely to experience early conception compared to their counterparts. Conclusions: The situation indicates that the overall health of the community is at stake. For the traction of the situation, priority should be given to enhance education and income level of slum people, especially women. Family planning programmes should be strengthened and improved with a special focus to the coverage of the slum areas.

A cross sectional study was conducted to assess the microbiological quality of local food items vended by the school-based street food vendors in Dhaka City. A total of 80 schools from 19 school-zones of Dhaka City and its outskirts were chosen for the study. A total of 110 food samples, one each from 110 school-based street food vendors, were collected for laboratory analysis. Face to face interviews were conducted with the food vendors using a pre-tested questionnaire. The food samples were analyzed for coliform counts in the Public Health Laboratory, Institute of Public Health, Dhaka, which is a national level central food testing laboratory in Bangladesh. Microbiological criteria recommended by the International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods (ICMSF) were considered to classify food samples as 'satisfactory' (total coliforms100 per g or ml) and 'unsatisfactory' (total coliforms ≥ 100 per g or ml). Multivariable logistic regression was used to explore the association of selected socio-demographic characteristics of school-based street food vendors with the presence of unsatisfactory levels of coliforms in their food items. Of the 110 school-based street food samples analyzed in the laboratory, 44% were unsatisfactory. Among different items of street vended foods, 54% of sliced fruits samples, 59% of jhalmuri samples, 29% of chotpotis samples, 53% of vajavuji samples, and all (100%) sharbat samples were unsatisfactory, while all samples from achar (100%) and ice cream (100%) were found to be satisfactory. Logistic regression models showed that the food samples collected from the vendors belonging to the age group '15-24 years' and the vendors possessing an educational status higher than primary level were less likely to be unsatisfactory, while the food samples collected from the vendors having a daily income of more than 200 Bangladeshi Taka (equivalent to 3.00 USD) were more likely to be unsatisfactory. Our study findings reflected poor microbiological quality for a considerable proportion of the school-based street vended foods indicating a health threat to the school children of Dhaka City.

We carried out a cross-sectional study to determine the level of knowledge and awareness regarding children's food safety issues among the school-based street food vendors in Dhaka city. A total of 250 school-based street food vendors were interviewed employing a pre-tested structured questionnaire comprising foodborne illness and food hygiene-related questions. We used a scoring system based on the responses obtained from them, and categorized the overall level of knowledge and awareness into "adequate" and "inadequate." Multivariable logistic regression was used to explore the association between selected sociodemographic characteristics and the level of knowledge and awareness. The most common food item vended by school-based street food vendors was chotpoti/fuchka (37.2%). The median number of schoolchildren customers was 120 per vendor per day. All (100%) vendors were male with a mean age of 30.95±8.8 years, and their mean daily income was 131.16±62.54 Bangladeshi Taka (1.97±0.94 USD). Most (40.1%) of the respondents belonged to the age group 25-34 years, and the majority (43.6%) did not have any formal education. More than two-thirds (68%) vendors could not show adequate level of knowledge and awareness of children's food safety issues. The most common source of obtaining food safety information by vendors was electronic media (91.8%). Elderly (≥45 years) vendors were 17.73 times more likely to have adequate level of knowledge and awareness than the vendors belonging to age group 15-24 years (p0.001; adjusted OR=17.73; 95% CI=4.38-71.73). Individuals who had an education of higher than primary level were 9.87 times more likely to possess adequate level of knowledge and awareness than those who did not have any formal education (p0.01; adjusted OR=9.87; 95% CI=2.07-46.93). The majority of school-based street food vendors showed an inadequate level of knowledge and awareness of children's food safety issues.

A simple, sensitive and accurate spectrophotometric method has been developed for the deterrmination of Olmesartan Medoxomil in raw material and tablets. The ?max of Olmesartan Medoxomil was found to be 256 nm. The linear dynamic response was found to be in the concentration range of 4-14 ?g/mL and coefficient of correlation was found to be 0.9993. The %RSD value was below 2.0 for intraday and interday precision indicated that the method was highly precise. The LOD and LOQ were found to be 0.105 and 0.3045 ?g/mL respectively which revealed that method was highly sensitive. The percentage recovery value was higher than 100 %, indicating the accuracy of the method and absence of interference of the excipients present in the formulation. The proposed method was simple, fast, accurate, precise and reproducible and hence can be applied for routine quality control analysis of Olmesartan Medoxomil in bulk and pharmaceutical formulations. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/ijpls.v1i3.12980 International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Vol.1(3) 2012

Multi-media applications (including those arising in E-health scenarios) can cause temporally varying resource demands in cloud environments. As a result, flexible resource provisioning becomes a key requirement. Cloud computing achieves "provisioning elasticity" by using virtual machine (VM) based resource provisioning. Normal, static VM provisioning has no runtime overhead but fails to deal with unanticipated changes in resource demands. Dynamic provisioning overcomes this problem using live migration of VMs but introduces runtime overhead. To reduce unnecessary VM migration, we propose Differential Time shared VM Multiplexing (DTVM) to help support load adaptability while ensuring efficient resource utilization in cloud datacenters. DTVM looks at possible local (i.e. in the same physical machine) solutions to limit VM migration by providing more resources to high demand VMs obtained from low demand VMs. DTVM effectively allows cloud providers to prioritize among the end-users (i.e. virtual machines). DTVM also allows the end-users to prioritize their tasks in their VMs to finish important tasks at the earliest time. In this paper, we introduce DTVM for cloud environments and assess its potential benefits using CloudSim [6]. The results obtained from our simulation experiments suggest that this approach is both feasible and would be effective for interactive multi-media workloads in cloud environments.

Purpose: Early detection of ovarian malignancy is of great clinical importance. The high mortality rate is due to the difficulties with the early detection of ovarian cancer. Current research attempted to assess the accuracy of Color Doppler Sonography and serum CA-125 level as diagnostic tool of ovarian tumor.Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 60 consecutive patients with ovarian tumor attending the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of BSMMU were recruited. Of the study participants 23.3% belong to 16-25 year age group, 20% belong to 26-35 years age group and 23.30% each were of 46-55 years and > 55 years age group. All the patients recruited were from in-patient department and had undergone surgery. Following excision, routine histopathology revealed 43.30% malignant (n=26) and 56.7% (n=34) benign ovarian lesion. Data were collected from the clinical history form and bimanual pelvic examination, serum CA 125 levels, estimation of Resistance index (RI), Pulsatility Index (PI), Novel Index by CDS and post-operative histo-pathological findings were then recorded. Sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive and negative predictive value of the diagnosis made by CDS, CA125, in the discrimination of the benign and malignant ovarian tumors was calculated. Using Receiver operative characteristics analysis the accuracy of RI, PI, CA 125 and Novel Index in the diagnosis of ovarian tumor (benign or malignant) were assessed.Results: With the Cut-off of