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In Bangladesh, especially the informal sector workers are deprived of proper healthcare owing to high cost and lack of security like health insurance. The study aims to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) of the informal sector workers for premium-based health insurance on the basis of data collected from 210 households, where double bounded dichotomous choice (DBDC) model was applied. The study estimates that this working-class people are willing to pay a monthly premium of on average around BDT (Bangladeshi Taka) 315 (USD 3.66) in response to enjoy the facilities of health insurance scheme for a household comprising up to four family members. Moreover, the per household estimated average monthly optimum tariff rate of almost BDT 300 (USD 3.54) and monthly mean social optimum tariff rate of about BDT 100 (USD 1.18) indicate the assurance of socially desirable welfare for all of the market participants. By charging this tariff, approximately 97 percent of the people would enjoy access to community-based health insurance, in addition to generating revenue that is around 1.13 times the project’s cost. Even by charging this monthly mean social optimum tariff, approximately 97 percent of the households would enjoy the access to community-based health insurance; the generating revenue through that tariff rate is around 1.13 times of the probable cost for high service package health scheme. In order to alleviate the burden of the out-of-pocket (OOP) costs for this vulnerable community, the study advises policymakers to initiate health insurance scheme by maintaining effective supervision over market dynamics and fixing the best fit premium rate.

Background: The E-test involves using a predefined antibiotic gradient on a strip, which is then placed on an agar plate containing the bacterial culture. The point at which the antibiotic concentration on the strip causes inhibition of bacterial growth is taken as the MIC. This method allows for the rapid and accurate determination of the MIC of antibiotics against specific bacterial strains and can aid in selecting appropriate antibiotics for treatment. Objectives: The aim of this study was also to include a comparison of the results with those of previous studies and an evaluation of the study's limitations. Method: A cross-sectional microbiological study was conducted at the Department of Microbiology, and the Department of ENT Rajshahi Medical College, Bangladesh, from January to December 2019. This section will provide a detailed description of the methods used in the study, including the study design, sampling methods, and procedures for collecting and analyzing the data. The methods section will also explain the E-test method used to determine MIC, including the procedure for performing the test and the criteria for interpreting the results. Results: A total of 96 samples, among 73 isolates from 68 culture-positive cases, 37 isolates showed intermediate susceptibility towards selected antibiotics such as beta-lactams, aminoglycosides and quinolones by disc diffusion method. Regarding MIC breakpoint in terms of susceptibility, out of 21 intermediate isolates of S. aureus, 16(76.2%) were susceptible, 01(4.8%) was intermediate, and 04(19%) were resistant to different antibiotics by E-test. Conclusion: In general, the conclusion of such an article would likely summarize the study's findings, such as the MIC values for the different antibiotics tested and how they compare to established MIC breakpoints, and any significant observations or trends noted. It may also discuss the clinical relevance of the results and provide recommendations for future research.

Background: The study was designed to explore the preventive practices of hepatitis B among the stuff of Dental faculty of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, (BSMMU) Dhaka. Methods: This cross-sectional observational type of study was conducted at Dental department of BSMMU, Dhaka from October 2008 to March 2009. All the staff of this Department was enrolled as study population. Total 150 stuffs of the Dental faculty were selected purposively. The study was conducted through direct face to face interview using an interview schedule during the study period. Results: Out of all patients 28.3% were age group of 16 years. Among dental assistants 66.67% practiced for

Purpose Considering the existing evidence on the impact of female board members on the default risks of an organization, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of board gender diversity, alongside institutional characteristics and macroeconomic factors, on the financing costs of microfinance institutions (MFIs). Design methodology approach This study collected unbalanced panel data of 1,190 unique MFIs between 2010 and 2018 from the World Bank. The collected data, which covers a total of 95 developing and emerging countries, was thereafter analyzed using the pooled ordinary least squares and random effects model. To overcome endogeneity and omitted variable bias (e.g. time-invariant variables), the authors have also used the generalized method of moments and fixed effects model, respectively. Different proxies of board gender diversity and sub-sample analysis by regions were further undertaken to examine the robustness of the obtained results. Findings The findings of this study revealed that board gender diversity has a statistically significant negative effect on the financing costs of MFIs. This suggests that a gender-diverse board can generate cheaper funding for MFIs by minimizing their default risks through effective monitoring and strategic management. Furthermore, the negative impact of board gender diversity on financing costs appears to be more pronounced when there is a minimum of two female board members in the boardroom of MFIs. The results of this study remain consistent and valid regardless of alternate model specifications (e.g. sub-sample analysis, use of alternative proxies of board gender diversity and application of different estimators) and endogeneity issues. Ultimately, the findings in this study reiterate the importance of promoting and implementing gender diversity in the boardroom to minimize the financing costs of MFIs. Originality value This study investigated the relationship between board gender diversity and financing costs of MFIs by using relatively recent and global data. The minimum number of female board members required to significantly reduce the financing costs of MFIs was also identified.

Purpose: Over the years, tax revenue, foreign aid, and debt play a prominent role in finance the South Asian countries’ government spending. Thus, this paper aims to analyze the effects of foreign aid, debt, and tax revenue on government spending in South Asia. Methodology: The study considers six south Asian countries over 25 years from 1990-2014. The panel data method is used to analyze the impact of explanatory variables on the dependent variable. Findings: From the empirical analysis, it is found that foreign aid, tax revenue, and total debt have a positive impact on government spending. It indicates that when these variables increase, government spending also grows significantly. However, a higher interest rate ebbs the volume of receiving debt among the sampled countries. Originality: Under this circumstance, this paper advocate that rational use of tax revenue may abate the aid dependency and debt burden in South Asian countries.

The issue of co-movements is still crucial and arguable in international finance. An optimum and significant level of co-movement is highly desirable to investors, and it mostly depends on investors’ decisions (behavior and psychology). We use frequency–time bands and multi-scale-based wavelet analysis to investigate the co-movement between developed and emerging countries’ stock markets for better asset allocation and portfolio diversification strategies. The results show that a significant level of co-movement is observed between conventional and Islamic stock markets in developed and emerging countries, and it varies in terms of its time–frequency domain properties. Particularly, the dependency among conventional and Islamic stock markets is strong at 4–512-band scales. However, the USA Islamic stock market illustrates a higher level of coherency with the UK, Japan and China’s Islamic stock markets, while a relatively lower level of co-movement is detected with the Chinese composite, Malaysian and Indonesian Islamic stock markets. The findings further confirm that the developed countries’ stock markets are substantially influenced by the GFC in 2007–2008 and the European debt crisis in 2012, while this trend is surprisingly not observed in the emerging markets on a similar scale. Therefore, these crises have opened the door for the grabbing of portfolio diversification benefits from the emerging countries’ stock markets. These findings give some interesting insights to policymakers, investors and fund managers for portfolio diversification and risk management strategies.

Purpose Existing literature affirms that almost half of the young generation has remained unemployed worldwide. On the contrary civic engagement can be a powerful tool in combating this problem. However, the influencing factors that encourage the active participation of young adults yet to be identified. The purpose of this paper is to fill the research gap by creating and validating a research model by including three motives social presence commitment and online offline civic engagement. Design/methodology/approach The study took a quantitative approach to conduct a cross-sectional study. In total, 214 data were collected from the member of a Facebook group of Bangladesh named Foodbank, a restaurant review page through the online questionnaire. After that structural equation modelling techniques have been used to analyse the data, test the model validity and hypothesis. Findings The result shows that both commitment and social presence influence offline and online civic engagement. Excitement motives have a higher effect than information and convenience motive. Besides, 8 out of 10 hypotheses have shown significant results, with only the convenience motive not having any positive influence and effect on social presence and commitment. Practical implications Almost 47.6 out of 158.5 million are young people who are incapable of contributing fully to national development due to a lack of civic engagement. The outcome of this study will be useful for the Government of Bangladesh, as well as for non-governmental organisations and decision-making authorities to form assessments and develop policy on how to engage the young generation in civic activities to achieve further socio-economic development in the country. Originality/value This study contributes to existing literature with newly developed relationships between social presence-civic engagement and commitment-civic engagement. These unique relationships have been empirically tested and resulted insignificant. The study also identifies that it is vital to engage young people more in social works and increase their participation in offline and online activities.

At present the world is facing a boisterous challenge put by COVID-19 due to which countries are passing very difficult times. COVID-19 has now put both physical and mental impacts. However, how socioenvironmental factors affect mental health (stress and anxiety) during COVID-19 in developing countries is poorly understood, and so far, too few scholarly works have been accomplished focusing these countries. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the role of socioenvironmental factors on mental health of people during COVID-19 in the costal urban areas of Bangladesh, where we contemplate Composite COVID Stress Index (CCSI) and COVID Anxiety Scale (CAS) for analyzing mental health. Applying a cross-sectional web-based survey, 115 respondents were considered for this study. As analytical tools- Explanatory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Weighted Least Square (WLS) were applied, along with descriptive statistics. The results advocate that agitation, scarcity, trauma, and infodemic altogether affect the degree of stress during COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, a number of socioenvironmental factors namely agitation, scarcity, infodemic, age, literacy level, living condition (in terms of settlement type), source of drinking water, security status (in terms of criminal activity), and number of ailments significantly affect the degree of coronavirus triggered anxiety during the pandemic for the respondents. Thus, findings propose the need of both physical and psychological healthcare services, online-based healthcare programs and spread of authentic COVID-19 information and basic amenities sufficiency.

Overdispersion in count data analysis is very common in many practical fields of health sciences. Ignorance of the presence of overdispersion in such data analysis may cause misleading inferences and thus lead to incorrect interpretations of the results. Researchers should account for the consequences of overdispersion and need to select the correct choice of models for the analysis of such data. In this paper, Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) are applied in modelling and analysis of antenatal care (ANC) count data extracted from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) 2014. Pearson chi-square and different score tests are used to investigate the effect of overdispersion in the analysis. Overdispersion is found to be significant in the antenatal health care count data and so appropriate modelling is used to produce valid inferences for the regression parameters. The zero-truncated negative binomial regression (0-NBR) is found to be the best choice for analysing such data while excluding zero counts. Study findings reveal that place of residence, order of birth, exposure to mass media, wealth index and education of mother have significant impacts on the ANC status of women during pregnancy in Bangladesh.

— Dentistry is a major branch of medicine. It deals with the study and the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of diseases of the oral cavity, adjacent structures and tissues [1]. Biomedical engineering is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering science that deals with the application of engineering principles in the field of biology and medicine for the betterment of health [2]. Being an ancient branch of medicine, dentistry largely needs a lot of technical instruments for its purpose to serve its patients [3].

For a developing and largely populated country, it is quite difficult to solve all healthcare related issues using existing technology with affordable cost and desired precision. Moreover, to carry out biomedical research and design to improve biomedical equipment, devices and maintenance are usually very expensive. Thus, it is imperative and possible to extent indigenous technologies and raw materials for the research activities to design and develop sustained biomedical devices and equipment, artificial organ and tissue, prosthetics and implants, image modalities and healthcare related software at low-cost. Thus, the research and study related to biomedical engineering need to improve to understand the role and impact of this subject as a discipline.

Now-a-days air pollution is one of the most important concern of the world. Air pollution may evolve from anthropogenic or natural sources. Air pollutants of atmospheric substances like CO, CO2, SO2, NO2, and O3 suspended particulate matter (SPM), repairable suspended particulate matter (RSPM), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have a great effect on the people health. Most of the major cities in developing countries and most cities of the developed countries are suffering from it. Thus to develop a real time air quality and pollution monitoring system is critical. We have developed an arduino based air pollution detector which combined a small-sized, minimum-cost sensor to an arduino microcontroller unit. The advantages of the detector, have a reliable stability, rapid response recovery and long-life features. It is affordable, user-friendly, low-cost and minimum-power requirement hardware which is appropriate for mobile measurement, as well as comprehensible data collection. It has a processing software able to analyze, collected quality data with high precision. Simple instrument which can be commercially utilized.

The dental implant is used to replace the natural tooth system. It requires comprehensive preoperative planning and precise surgical execution. In this case report, a 45 year old male presented with missing upper left maxillary central incisor which was extracted 5 months back. He had discomfort during function and unwillingness to smile. He wanted to replace that edentulous area. The treatment options for replacing the missing tooth were discussed with the patient. Finally, with patient's consent the decision was made to replace that edentulous area with an implant supported porcelain fused to metal prosthesis in an esthetic manner. Recall visits exhibited patient's high-level confidence of smile with optimum satisfaction and successful aesthetic outcome.

Objective: The primary objective was to study whether the cytotoxicity of Wortmannin (Wtmn) triggers apoptotic programmed cell death on the widely-used model breast cancer MCF-7 cell to understand this small molecule’s biological signaling mechanisms. Methods: In this present study, MCF-7 cells anti-proliferative activities determined by using MTT assays to quantify the cytotoxicity of the Wtmn. The direct cellular and molecular effect of Wtmn was investigated selectively using flow cytometric cell cycle, mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) assays, fluorescent and phase contrast microscopy. Results: Our biochemical and morphological experimental analysis showed that Wtmn inhibits the proliferation of MCF-7 breast cancer cells and facilitates their entry into the apoptosis mode of programmed cell death. Conclusion: Our experimental results directed towards elucidating the cytotoxicity of Wtmn and it’s biological mechanisms indicates anti-proliferative and apoptogenic properties. This strategy can serve as a screening model for anti-cancer treatment in-vitro.

The Banking sector of Bangladesh is trapped in a gridlock of non-performing loans (NPLs) so much so that NPL accounts for 11.60 percent of the total volume of classified loans. This problem has started to be widening with an evil trend of loan embezzlement among the industrial borrowers in our country. Frequent scam series in banking industry is surely a red light and unfortunately the commercial banks are highly surrounded by it. The goal of the study is to analyze the impact of non-performing loan (NPL) on profitability where in this study considered net interest margin (NIM). This paper attempts to find out the time series scenario of non-performing loans (NPLs), its growth, provisions and relation with banks profitability by using some ratios and a linear regression model of econometric technique. The empirical results represent that non-performing loan (NPL) as percentage of total loans on listed banks in Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) is very high and they holds more than 50 % of total non-performing loans (NPLs) of the listed 30 banks in Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) for year 2008 to 2013. Moreover it is one of the major factors of influencing banks profitability and it has statistically significant negative impact on net profit margin (NPM) of listed banks for the study periods.

The main objective of the present study is to investigate the factors, demographic variables and users’ perception, that influence the adoption of mobile banking in Bangladesh. The study also discusses the status of mobile banking usage using age, gender, and occupation as demographic variables, and the perception of users toward mobile banking in terms of trustworthiness, security, cost and convenience, complexity, and network availability. It includes specific reference to how these demographic variables and users’ perception influence mobile banking usage. A self administered questionnaire has been developed to conduct a survey on a sample of 400 mobile banking users for a period of 4 years i.e. 2012 to 2015. Analysis has revealed that majority of the users are male and students of age 20-24 years. They perceive mobile banking to be trustworthy, secured and cost effective, though complex and vulnerable to network problem. Using panel regression analysis the study has revealed that differences in demographic characteristics have no influence over mobile banking adoption. It has also revealed that perception to security, cost and convenience, and complexity in using mobile banking service influences variations in mobile banking adoption. Conversely, perception to trustworthiness and network problem has been found to have no influence; however, it has been found to have influence on mobile banking adoption using score model assessment.

Rozina Akter,1 Md. Zakir Hossain,2 Maurice G Kleve,3 Michael A Gealt31Applied Biosciences Emphasis, Department of Applied Science, 2Graduate Institute of Technology, 3Department of Biology, College of Science and of Mathematics, University Arkansas at Little Rock, Little Rock, AR, USABackground: Apoptosis can be used as a reliable marker for evaluating potential chemotherapeutic agents. Because wortmannin is a microbial steroidal metabolite, it specifically inhibits the phosphatidyl inositol 3-kinase pathway, and could be used as a promising apoptosis-based therapeutic agent in the treatment of cancer. The objective of this study was to investigate the biomolecular mechanisms involved in wortmannin-induced cell death of breast cancer-derived MCF-7 cells.Methods and results: Our experimental results demonstrate that wortmannin has strong apoptotic effects through a combination of different actions, including reduction of cell viability in a dose-dependent manner, inhibition of proliferation, and enhanced generation of intracellular reactive oxygen species.Conclusion: Our findings suggest that wortmannin induces MCF-7 cell death via a programmed pathway showing chromatin condensation, nuclear fragmentation, reactive oxygen species, and membrane blebbing, which are characteristics typical of apoptosis.Keywords: wortmannin, human breast adenocarcinoma, apoptosis, reactive oxygen species, flow cytometry

Cytotoxicity study of magnetic nanomaterials is a key consideration for biomedical applications. Very little is known about the cytotoxic and anti-cancer effects of nickel nanowires (Ni NWs) on mammalian cells and their interaction with proliferating cancer cells. Current therapeutics do not address the full heterogeneity of pancreatic cancers due to the resistance to apoptosis and does not suffice for a successful treatment. Therefore, synthesis of novel anticancer drugs continues to be a potential topic for pancreatic cancer research. In this study, we have investigated the cellular toxicity and anti-cancer effects of Ni NWs in one of the most aggressive human pancreatic ductal cancer (Panc-1) cell lines with the objective of development of a potential treatment strategy. Ni NWs were fabricated in a custom-made setup utilizing the electrodeposition method. Elemental analysis, crystallographic structure, and morphological properties of the synthesized Ni NWs were investigated using Energy Dispersive X-ray Analysis (EDAX), X-Ray Diffraction (X-RD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), respectively. Panc-1 cell cultures were maintained according to a slightly modified American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) protocol. Morphological apoptogenic characteristics assessment of the Ni NWs induced Panc-1 cell was accomplished using phase contrast microscopy (PCM). Two commercially available cytotoxicity procedures including 3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) and trypan blue (TB) assays were utilized to determine the qualitative and quantitative cytotoxicity and anti-cancer effects of Ni NWs. As a negative control, Panc-1 cells without Ni NWs treatment were used in all experiments. Phase contrast microscopy (PCM) was used to confirm the Ni NWs internalization by Panc-1 cells. Both the MTT and TB assays, qualitatively and quantitatively confirmed the cytotoxic and anti-cancer effects of Ni NWs treated Panc-1 cells in vitro in both concentration and exposure-time dependent manners. We studied the cytotoxic and anti-cancer effects of Ni NWs on Panc-1 cells using novel integrated bionanotechnological approaches to understand the corresponding biological pathway with the objective of developing pancreatic cancer treatment. More specifically, we explored the molecular mechanisms associated with the pathway involved in Ni NWs induced toxicity against Panc-1 cells. Our results demonstrated that Ni NWs show strong candidacy for targeting cell selective applications in pancreatic cancer therapy. Key words: Nickel Nanowires, anti-cancer effects, pancreatic cancer.

Banking sector is the most important component of financial system. Development of banking system contributes to the stability and sustainable economic growth. This is one of the Major Service sectors in Bangladesh economy, which divided into four categories of scheduled Banks. These are Nationalized Commercial Banks (NCBs), Government Owned Development Financial Institutions (DFIs), Private Commercial Banks (PCBs), and Foreign Commercial Banks (FCBs). The aim of the research is to comparatively analyze the financial soundness of the commercial banks that operate in Bangladesh. In order to achieve this we have used one of the most popular methods for the analysis of the financial soundness of banks, namely the CAMELS framework. At present, a total of 56 banks (4 SCBs, 4 DFIs, 39 PCBs and 9 FCBs) having 8794 branches are operating in Bangladesh with Tk. 8675.2 billion total assets and Tk. 6558.7 billion deposits. Quantitative comparison has been done on the basis of CAMEL ratio. CAMEL ratios mainly indicate the adequacy of the risk based capital, non-performing loan position, expenditure-income ratio, return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), net interest income (NII), writing of debt, liquid assets, excess liquidity, etc. The study compares the 4 types of bank's time series performance on the basis of selected CAMEL ratios. CAMELS rating system shows that no banks have been rated 1 or Strong; the rating of 28 banks were 2 or satisfactory; rating of 12 banks were 3 or fair; 6 banks were rated 4 or marginal and 1 bank received 5 or unsatisfactory rating.