Search

Background: The use of tobacco has been significantly increased globally in recent decades. Easy availability and the low price gives rise to high consumption of tobacco smoking. Tobacco use is a leading preventable cause of premature mortality and morbidity.. Previous studies described the detrimental effects of tobacco smoking on liver function. Objectives: To observe the effects of tobacco consumption on the levels of serum alanine aminotransferase and alkaline phosphatase levels in smokers. Methods: The cross-sectional analytical study was conducted from January 2017 to January 2018 in the department of physiology, Rangpur Medical College, Rangpur. A total number of 60 subjects were selected, among them 30 were apparently healthy non-tobacco chewer non-smoker subjects as control group ( group A) and 30 were apparently healthy smoker non-tobacco chewer subjects ( group B). The subjects were selected from different area of Rangpur city. The effects of cigarette smoking on liver function were studied by measuring the levels of serum alanine aminotransferase and alkaline phosphatase levels. For statistical analysis independent sample “t” test was performed by computer based software SPSS-17.0 version for windows. Results: Serum alanine aminotransferase and alkaline phosphatase levels were significantly higher (p

Background: The Oculocardiac reflex (OCR) is a well-known complication of ocular surgery involving direct or indirect manipulation of the eye or ocular adnexa. While most commonly associated with eye muscle surgery, with a reported incidence of 40-93%, it is prevalent during traction on the extraocular or eyelid muscles, compression of the globe, intraocular and retro bulbar injection, iris traction, retinal reattachment surgery and enucleation procedures and may manifest as a wide range of arrhythmias including ventricular bigeminy, bradycardia and asystole. Occurrence of the reflex in eye muscle surgery has been documented to increase with hypoxia and decrease with aging and premedication with anticholinergics, namely glycopyrrolate or atropine. Objective: The purpose of our study was to determine the degree of change in heart rate (HR) and systolic blood pressure (SBP) during Enucleation surgery in patients anaesthetized with equipotent concentrations of Isoflurane or Halothane breathing via a laryngeal mask airway (LMA). Methods: The study was designed as a prospective randomizedstudy. Fifty patients, having selected for Enucleation were randomized to Isoflurane (I) or halothane (H) in 66% nitrous oxide at 1.3 minimum alveolar concentration. Patients breathed through a laryngeal mask airway (LMA) and were not pretreated with anticholinergics. Results: The Oculocardiac reflex (OCR), defined as a 20% decrease in heart rate (HR) from baseline, dysrhythmias or sinoatrial arrest concomitant with ocular muscle traction occurred less frequently with Isoflurane than with halothane (I: 37%, H:78%, P = 0.009). The HR during induction was higher with Isoflurane (I: 110 ± 13 bpm, H: 100 ± 15 bpm, P = 0.002). The lowest HR occurred with halothane (I: 94 ± 22 bpm, H: 72 ± 19 bpm, P = 0.001). The incidence of dysrhythmias was higher in the halothane group (I 4%, H: 42%, P = 0.004). Isoflurane may be a more suitable anaesthetic than halothane for operations involving traction on the ocular muscles with controlled respiration in patients because of reduced incidence of OCR with slightly higher airway irritability. Conclusion: Some patients experience a sudden slowing of the heart when the surgeon pulls on the eye muscles during Enucleation operations under anaesthesia. We found that Isoflurane was associated with a lower incidence of the OCR but relatively higher airway irritability compared with halothane. The oculocardiac reflex possesses the potential for significant morbidity and mortality. While some have documented factors affecting the OCR during eye muscle surgery, our data could not prove such a relationship during enucleation. J. Natl. Inst. Ophthalmol. 2022;5(1):21-26

Background: The World Health Organization has announced overweight and obesity as a global epidemic that has strong associations with renal function impairment. Objectives: To evaluate the serum creatinine and urea status in adult female individuals with previous normal renal function and to observe the correlation of serum creatinine and urea with body mass index (BMI). Methods: This cross-sectional analytical study was conducted in the Department of Physiology, Rangpur Medical College, Rangpur. After briefing about the objectives, adult female subjects who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria were enrolled in the study with permission. The study included 90 subjects who were divided into three groups- apparently healthy adult females with normal weight (Group-A), apparently healthy overweight adult females (Group-B), and apparently healthy obese adult females (Group-C). The subjects were selected from different areas of Rangpur city. Their body mass index, serum creatinine, and urea were measured. For statistical analysis, one way ANOVA (post-Hoc) test and Pearson’s correlation coefficient test were performed as applicable by computer-based SPSS-25.0 for windows. Regarding the interpretation of results, p_0.05 was accepted as significant. Results: The mean serum creatinine level was significantly (p_0.001) higher in overweight and obese female adults than in normal-weight female adults. It was also significantly (p_0.05) higher in obese female adults than in overweight female adults. Again, the mean serum urea level was significantly (p_0.05) higher in overweight female adults than normal-weight female adults and in obese female adults than in overweight female adults. It was also significantly (p_0.001) higher in obese female adults than in normal-weight female adults. This study also found highly significant (p_0.001) positive correlation of serum creatinine (r=0.499) and urea (r=0.396) with body mass index. Conclusion: Serum creatinine and urea were elevated in overweight and obese female adults and both parameters were positively correlated with BMI. Regular body mass index screening is recommended to assess body weight easily and effectively. J Rang Med Col. September 2022; Vol. 7, No. 2:25-30

This paper aims at understanding about the socio-economic impact of women entrepreneurship in Bangladesh. Though Bangladeshi women are entering into business sector, they continue to remain vulnerable and marginalized. One of the indications of their marginalization is lack of information and statistics about the situation of women entrepreneurs. This study was therefore carried out focusing on socio-economic impact on entrepreneurship over women lives. For this, exploratory and qualitative research approaches were adopted. All female entrepreneurs of handloom industry in Sylhet City Corporation of Bangladesh were considered as population and data were collected from the purposive sampling method from the population using in-depth interview schedule. Results indicate that their values and reputations have gained betterment along with their business. Nonetheless, these women had to face a number of difficulties while trying to set up their work such as finding a place to open a shop in the market. Market authorities do not believe in women's efficiency, so do the banks. It is difficult for the women entrepreneurs to manage loans from the banks. Most of the respondents had said that they do not face any complications performing their roles as spouse, parents, or homemaker while running the business. Most of the time, their husbands, or other family members encourage them to start and continue a business. After starting the business, most women feel that their status has risen not only within the family but also within the society. Now they enjoy freedom and also contribute economically and to family decision making.

Background: Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) and thyroid disorder are common endocrine disorders that affect major population worldwide. Subclinical hypothyroidism is common among T2DM. Objectives: To observe thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), total thyroxine (TT 4 ), free thyroxine (FT 4 ), total triiodothyronine (TT 3 ), free triiodothyronine (FT 3 ) levels in newly diagnosed T2DM. Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted from July 2014 to June 2015. For this, 50 newly diagnosed T2DM patients aged 30 to 50 years of both sexes were enrolled from the Out Patient Department of Endocrinology, Rangpur Medical College and Diabetic Association, Rangpur. Fifty age matched non-diabetic healthy subjects of both sexes constituted control. Serum TSH, TT 4 , FT 4 , TT 3 , FT 3 levels were estimated to observe thyroid function. All these hormones were estimated by ELISA method. For statistical analysis independent sample “t” test was performed. Results: Serum TSH was significantly higher (p

General Health and Alienation Status of Divorced Women in Bangladesh

Proteins are the building blocks of all cells in both human and all living creatures of the world. Most of the work in the living organism is performed by proteins. Proteins are polymers of amino acid monomers which are biomolecules or macromolecules. The tertiary structure of protein represents the three-dimensional shape of a protein. The functions, classification and binding sites are governed by the protein’s tertiary structure. If two protein structures are alike, then the two proteins can be of the same kind implying similar structural class and ligand binding properties. In this paper, we have used the protein tertiary structure to generate effective features for applications in structural similarity to detect structural class and ligand binding. Firstly, we have analyzed the effectiveness of a group of image-based features to predict the structural class of a protein. These features are derived from the image generated by the distance matrix of the tertiary structure of a given protein. They include local binary pattern (LBP) histogram, Gabor filtered LBP histogram, separate row multiplication matrix with uniform LBP histogram, neighbor block subtraction matrix with uniform LBP histogram and atom bond. Separate row multiplication matrix and neighbor block subtraction matrix filters, as well as atom bond, are our novels. The experiments were done on a standard benchmark dataset. We have demonstrated the effectiveness of these features over a large variety of supervised machine learning algorithms. Experiments suggest support vector machines is the best performing classifier on the selected dataset using the set of features. We believe the excellent performance of Hybrid LBP in terms of accuracy would motivate the researchers and practitioners to use it to identify protein structural class. To facilitate that, a classification model using Hybrid LBP is readily available for use at http://brl.uiu.ac.bd/PL/. Protein-ligand binding is accountable for managing the tasks of biological receptors that help to cure diseases and many more. Therefore, binding prediction between protein and ligand is important for understanding a protein’s activity or to accelerate docking computations in virtual screening-based drug design. Protein-ligand binding prediction requires three-dimensional tertiary structure of the target protein to be searched for ligand binding. In this paper, we have proposed a supervised learning algorithm for predicting protein-ligand binding, which is a similarity-based clustering approach using the same set of features. Our algorithm works better than the most popular and widely used machine learning algorithms.

Image recognition-based methods have been widely used in leaf detection. Leaf detection can play an important role in agriculture in detecting potential plant diseases, phenotyping and taxonomy. In this paper, we present an analysis on the wavelet and pyramid histogram-based features for leaf detection. We have used Haar wavelet transform and pyramid histograms from original image as feature extraction method. The experiments were done on a standard dataset of leaf images of 36 different species of plants. We have tested the effectiveness of different types of features over a large variety of supervised machine learning algorithms. We propose the use of Random Forest as the best performing classifier on this dataset using the selected features. Our proposed method achieved significantly better accuracy in comparison to the previous methods.

This paper focuses on socio-cultural context of dowry practice in Sylhet city of Bangladesh. By using qualitative methods twenty one dowry victims were selected purposively from three prominent organizations working with victims of dowry. In-depth interview schedule was used as a tool of data collection. Dowry is one of the most common forms of gender based discrimination in Bangladesh. Every year thousands of women used to face serious social, psychological and physical torture due to dowry related dispute. Even though they become the victim of acid violence; sometime some are killed by their husband and their in-laws. But practice of dowry is not similar in all the region of the country due to social, economic and cultural conditions. People are very likely to see it as a custom rather than an offence. Due to fear of losing social status, ignorance, improper or no idea about legal procedure and conservative social attitude they are less interested in seeking legal steps against their husbands and in-laws. wide range of impact over the society, especially brutal to women. It is something unethical and unsocial that people use as a weapon against other family when they get agreed to be related. It is estimated that one-third of the population live below the poverty line and unable to manage two meals per day. This poverty-ridden portion is almost rootless, live in slums or in the open air, have no strong family bondage or responsibility. Society is still dominated by the male, and women are less empowered to take decision in case of marriage, divorce, property maintain etc. Weakness in marriage registration process, early marriage and polygamy is comparatively easy that is one of the root causes of dowry in Bangladesh. Marriage among Muslim is civil and contractual, whereas it is sacramental and eternal for Hindus. The custom of dowry as prevalent in Bangladesh presents a typical dilemma for the 'universalism and cultural relativism' debate. Dowry is considered to be an ancient practice associated with the institution of marriage in Bangladesh, which in very broad terms involves the giving of gifts from the bride's side to the groom's side at the time of marriage.

This prospective clinical study was carried out in the Dept. of Anaesthesia, Analgesia and Intensive Care Medicine, BSMMU, Dhaka, during the period of May 2003 to July 2003. The study was done to emphasize the importance of giving analgesics preemptively instead of waiting for the child to complain of pain and to produce smooth recovery after surgery by decreasing immediate postoperative pain in children by a simple, safe acceptable drug. The children scheduled for tonsillectomy under general anaesthesia were recruited in this study. The analgesic efficiency of rectal paracetamol in two doses, 25 mg/kg bodywt.(Gr-P25) and 50 mg/kg. bodywt. (Gr-P50) were compared with Diclofenac Sodium suppository 1mg/ kg body weight (Gr-D) given half an hour before induction of anaesthesia. Pain scoring was done by TPPPS (Toddler Pre-schooler postoperative pain scale). Heart rate and blood pressure were stable in Gr-P50 and Gr-D. Time of first demand of analgesic was delayed in Gr-P50 and Gr-D. Total paracetamol consumption in 24 hours was less in Gr-P50(181±14.25) and Gr-D (212±25) than Gr-P25(318± 26.39). Total duration of analgesia in Gr- P50 (657±9.94) mins. and in Gr- D(502±10.63) mins. and in Gr-P25(288±23.17) mins. Pre-emptive high dose rectal paracetamol appears to be more effective than diclofenac sodium suppository for postoperative analgesia in children undergoing tonsillectomy. Journal of BSA, Vol. 18, No. 1 & 2, 2005 p.9-16

This study investigated the effects of several organotin silica surface modifiers on the ethylene polymerization performance of ((BUCP)-B-n)(2)ZrCl2-based supported catalysts in which MAO and metallocene were sequentially loaded. Each organotin compound acted as a spacer, increasing the catalyst activity. However, the catalyst activity and (M) over bar of the resulting polyethylenes varied as follows: Activity and fractional Sn+ charge: (BuSn)-Bu-n(OH)(2)Cl > MeSnCl3 > (BuSnCl3)-Bu-n > Reference catalyst; and, (M) over bar (w) : Reference catalyst > (BuSnCl3)-Bu-n > MeSnCl3 > (BuSn)-Bu-n(OH)(2)Cl. The above catalyst activity rating was explained considering the influence of the Lewis acidity, that is, the fractional Sn+ charge of the organotin modifiers on the generation, concentration, and electron density at the active [((BUCP)-B-n)(2)ZrMe](+) cation. All the catalysts showed fairly stable kinetic profiles and produced narrow molecular weight distribution resins; 2.8

Propylene was copolymerized with allylanisole (AA) using Me2Si(Ind)(2)ZrCl2 and Et(Ind)(2)ZrCl2, and the methylaluminoxane MAO cocatalyst at 70 degrees C and a cocatalyst to catalyst (Al:Zr) molar ratio of 1000. It was fed at 8.5 bar(g). The weight-average molecular weight, (M) over bar (w), for both metallocenes decreased as the AA feed concentration increased. Therefore, allylanisole acted as an in situ chain transfer agent. The chain transfer constants, k(tr)/k(P), of AA for Et(Ind)(2)ZrCI2 and Me2Si(Ind)(2)ZrCl2 turned out to be 0.33 and 0.40, respectively. The characterization of the resulting products by (HNMR)-H-1 demonstrated that AA end-capped the isotactic poly(propylene) chains which showed to be low molecular weight oligomers; 4.96 x 10(3)

A supported metallocene catalyst was synthesized by sequentially loading methylaluminoxane (MAO) (30 wt % in toluene) and (nBuCp)2ZrCl2 on partially dehydroxylated silica ES 70 modified by nBuSnCl3. Its shock load hydrogen responsiveness was evaluated by polymerizing ethylene for 1 h at 8.5 bar (g) and 75°C without separately feeding the MAO cocatalyst. The shock load hydrogen feeding increased the ethylene consumption (at a fairly constant rate), catalyst productivity, as well as the resin bulk density and average particle size at ΔP (of hydrogen) ≥∼3.0 psi. The bulk density increased from 0.25 to 0.31 g/cm3. This shows a procedure for overcoming the inherent drop in catalyst productivity caused by heterogenization of metallocenes (that is a method for catalyst activation) and improving the resulting resin bulk density. The volume-weighted mean particle diameter of the resulting polyethylenes was found to be 5.80–11.12-fold that of the catalyst corresponding to ΔP = 0.00–7.11 psi, respectively. The resulting kinetic profiles showed to be fairly stable. However, Mw and polydispersity index were not affected. The particle size distribution, average particle size, and the scanning electron microscope photographs of the resulting resin particles confirmed the occurrence of the replication phenomenon. On the basis of the above findings, the mechanism of ethylene polymerization under the present experimental conditions has been revisited. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 2007

A new composition comprising a polyanionic component, an aggregating agent and a bridging agent were successfully used to improve quite significantly the compressive strength of dune sands even at low dosages. A dose of 2% of a mixture of sulfonated urea-melamine formaldehyde and urea-formaldehyde with 0.25% sodium chloride gave a compressive strength of treated dune sand of 2.4 N/mm2. The design parameter for constructing road bases requires a compressive strength of 1.75 N/mm2. The use of the three components together of the present composition gives synergism in their effectiveness in improving the compressive strength of dune sand. The inclusion of inorganic fertilizers like potassium nitrate and potassium di-hydrogen phosphate with the present soil composition reduces the compressive strength of dune sand when all components are used at low dosages and increases the compressive strength when they are used at higher dosages. (A)

This paper aims to describe the social exclusion of Bihari Muslims of Moulavibazar district of Bangladesh who migrated from India. An attempt has been made to highlight their multidimensional aspects of vulnerability and day- to- day struggle for survival. Bihari Muslim people are among the migrants who came to Bangladesh in the period of partition in 1947. From that time they have been facing many difficulties, experiencing exclusion in the all spheres of their life and struggling hard for their survival. They are concentrated mostly in tea garden areas and struggling hard for their survival due to their impoverished economic condition and hostile social environment. They had to neglect every sphere of their life after coming to a new country where everyone dislikes them because they came from a Hindu originated country. Mainstream people always criticise them saying ‘Jala Muslim’. They rebuke, neglect, exclude and deprive them from every step of the privileged space. Mainstream people think Bihari people as a mean creature of God. The social status of Bihari people is very low in context to the mainstream. They do not give food to Bihari people in their dishes. Even the local Hindus do not allow them to touch their water pitch. They treat Bihari people as untouchables. At earlier Bihari people were not allowed to enter into the Mosque for prayer. Moreover when tube well and sanitary ring were provided from the tea garden the mainstreams were first selected. Bihari Muslim people are also excluded in the employment, education and health care delivery system.

Bangladesh is endowed with a number of natural forest ecosystems including inland Sal forest, dipterocarp forest, savanna, bamboo bushes in the hilly regions and freshwater swamp forests. It also have littoral mangrove ecosystems. An attempt was made to qualitatively analyse the impact of climate change on forest resources of Bangladesh.

This article is constructed on the basis of a study conducted in Sunamgonj District in Bangladesh. With the objective of an in-depth exploration on the marginalisation process of snake charmer community, the study used qualitative design. Purposive sampling technique has been used to select both research participants and study area. The study selected one of the villages of snake charmer and all male and female at the age of 18 years and above living in the selected village were considered as the population of the study. Twenty-five villagers were selected as sample and were interviewed with a standardised interview protocol consisting open-ended questions for covering all aspects of the research objectives. In addition with intensive interviewing, two focus group discussions were conducted with the participants. The study reveals that the socio-economic conditions of snake charmers are not so good comparing with the mainstream people of Bangladesh. On the other hand, this community does not have good relation with the people of mainstream society. They are frequently neglected and humiliated by the majority of population mainly because of their status as marginalised community Bose (2003). This people do not get job as majority people are reluctant to allow them to be engaged in mainstream occupations. Government offices ignore them due to their status as snake charmers. They are living within majority of people with same religious faith as Muslim but they are not accepted warmly by the majority Muslims. Name calling, labelling them as inferior group, use of some terms to humiliate and degrade them, etc, have become the part of their everyday life. They are not properly counted in voter list. Many of them cannot cast their votes, and do not have national identity card. They are facing identity crisis. This people want to be recognised as a distinct group like indigenous people.