Objective
We intend to identify some probable risk factors that are responsible for the severity of COVID‐19 using a meta‐analysis.
Methods
The literature exploration lasted up to 18 April 2020 and ...through PubMed, Google Scholar, EMBASE and Cochrane Library we have identified 10 pertinent publications. To paraphrase the outcomes of autonomous researches, we have performed a random‐effect meta‐analysis.
Results
A total of 2272 patients’ information was extracted from the selected literature. We have found gender (male) (Risk ratio RR = 1.29, 95% Confidence Interval CI 1.07 to 1.54), hypertension (RR = 1.79, 95% CI 1.57 to 2.04), diabetes (RR = 1.57, 95% CI 1.25 to 1.98), fatigue or myalgia (RR = 1.17, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.35), and smoking history (RR = 1.71, 95% CI 1.25 to 2.35) are potential risk factors for the severity of COVID‐19. We found fever (RR = 1.21, 95% CI 0.66 to 2.22), cough (1.13, 95% CI 0.98 to 1.30) and diarrhoea (RR = 1.14, 95% CI 0.93 to 1.40) as insignificant risk factors for COVID‐19 severity.
Conclusions
The findings of this research may be beneficial to identify patients with higher risks to provide additional medical attention from the very beginning of the treatment.
Introduction: The COVID-19 is currently the most horrible issue around the world as there is no proven vaccine or medicine for this rapidly spreading disease. The only way left to this situation is ...to slow down or eradicate the spreading by adopting preventing measures. Objective: The purpose of the study is to investigate the knowledge, attitude, and preventive practices toward COVID-19 among Bangladeshi internet users. Material and Methods: A total of 441 respondents voluntarily participated in a web-based cross-sectional survey. A structured questionnaire was created using Google Forms and the link was shared through authors’ networks. Collected information was analyzed using univariate, bivariate, and multivariate techniques. Results: Respondent of age 30 and above are more optimistic (Adjusted Odds Ratio AOR =1.96, 95% Confidence Interval CI, 1.13 to 3.41; P=0.016) compared to respondent of age 18-29. For 1 unit change in the knowledge score the likelihood of staying home and wearing mask increases by 1.73 (95% CI, 1.43 to 2.09; P<0.01) and 1.54 (95% CI, 1.25 to 1.77; P<0.01) times respectively. From the linear regression analysis, we see that urban residence type (vs. rural, β=0.274; P=0.024) are significantly associated with higher knowledge scores. Additionally, a significant positive correlation exists between the COVID-19 knowledge score and the preventive practice score (r=0.291, P <0.01). Conclusion: Although knowledge and preventive practices among Bangladeshi internet users are encouraging, this study suggests updated knowledge be provided by healthcare authorities to enhance appropriate preventive practices throughout the COVID-19 outbreak.
About 3.5% Americans identify themselves as lesbian, gay, or bisexual while 0.3% identify themselves as transgender. The LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community belongs to almost ...every race, ethnicity, religion, age, and socioeconomic group. The LGBT youth are at a higher risk for substance use, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), cancers, cardiovascular diseases, obesity, bullying, isolation, rejection, anxiety, depression, and suicide as compared to the general population. LGBT youth receive poor quality of care due to stigma, lack of healthcare providers' awareness, and insensitivity to the unique needs of this community. The main objective of this literature review is to highlight the challenges faced by the LGBT youth and to enhance the awareness among physicians about the existing disparities in order to provide a more comprehensive, evidence-based, and humane medical care to this community.
The aim of this study was to evaluate the antioxidant activity, screening the phytogenic chemical compounds, and to assess the alkaloids present in the E. intermedia to prove its uses in Pakistani ...folk medicines for the treatment of asthma and bronchitis. Antioxidant activity was analyzed by using 2,2-diphenyl-1-picryl-hydrazyl-hydrate assay. Standard methods were used for the identification of cardiac glycosides, phenolic compounds, flavonoids, anthraquinones, and alkaloids. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used for quantitative purpose of ephedrine alkaloids in E. intermedia. The quantitative separation was confirmed on Shimadzu 10AVP column (Shampack) of internal diameter (id) 3.0 mm and 50 mm in length. The extract of the solute in flow rate of 1 ml/min at the wavelength 210 nm and methanolic extract showed the antioxidant activity and powerful oxygen free radicals scavenging activities and the IC50 for the E. intermedia plant was near to the reference standard ascorbic acid. The HPLC method was useful for the quantitative purpose of ephedrine (E) and pseudoephedrine (PE) used for 45 samples of one species collected from central habitat in three districts (Ziarat, Shairani, and Kalat) of Balochistan. Results showed that average alkaloid substance in E. intermedia was as follows: PE (0.209%, 0.238%, and 0.22%) and E (0.0538%, 0.0666%, and 0.0514%).
This study has made the site response and liquefaction analysis of a solar power plant site in the northern part of Bangladesh. The site is situated in an area that is near to Himalayan thrust and ...home to numerous large earthquakes including the 1885 Bengal, the 1897 Great Indian, the 1930 Dhubri, the 1934 Bihar–Nepal, the 2011 Sikkim, and many other relatively smaller earthquakes. Because of the past seismicity and significance of the power plant site, seismic investigation has been performed in the seismic control region within a radius of 300 km from the center of the plant site. The peak ground acceleration (PGA) value at the bedrock level for a return period of 475 years for the site has been estimated to be 0.23 g. For the last few decades, the site coefficients are generally estimated from the mean shear wave velocity for the top 30 m of a location. The surface PGA of a location is equal to the product of the bedrock PGA and the estimated site coefficient. If the bedrock is located at a depth greater than 30 m below the ground, the site effect estimated from Vs30 cannot appropriately represent the site coefficient. For the study site, the bedrock is approximately 150 m below the ground. For loose sedimentary deposits of this site, the site coefficient based on Vs30 to assess the PGA on the surface is not suitable. In this research, site amplification factor based on Vs30, equivalent-linear, and nonlinear methods has been carried out to estimate the PGA at the surface of the site. In this site, the susceptibility of liquefaction has been estimated by utilizing 66 boreholes having SPT-N values at every 1.5 m distance from the surface to a depth of 20 m. Here liquefaction susceptibility has been assessed by applying Seed and Idriss’ simplified method, the Japanese method, and the Chinese method. The estimated LPI contours show that the soil up to a depth of 20 m for almost all the boreholes is highly susceptible to liquefaction.
The growth of the Internet has expanded the amount of data expressed by users across multiple platforms. The availability of these different worldviews and individuals' emotions empowers sentiment ...analysis. However, sentiment analysis becomes even more challenging due to a scarcity of standardized labeled data in the Bangla NLP domain. The majority of the existing Bangla research has relied on models of deep learning that significantly focus on context-independent word embeddings, such as Word2Vec, GloVe, and fastText, in which each word has a fixed representation irrespective of its context. Meanwhile, context-based pre-trained language models such as BERT have recently revolutionized the state of natural language processing. In this work, we utilized BERT's transfer learning ability to a deep integrated model CNN-BiLSTM for enhanced performance of decision-making in sentiment analysis. In addition, we also introduced the ability of transfer learning to classical machine learning algorithms for the performance comparison of CNN-BiLSTM. Additionally, we explore various word embedding techniques, such as Word2Vec, GloVe, and fastText, and compare their performance to the BERT transfer learning strategy. As a result, we have shown a state-of-the-art binary classification performance for Bangla sentiment analysis that significantly outperforms all embedding and algorithms.
This paper joins the growing body of work on Human Rights and Religion and examines the impacts of religious practices in protecting the socioeconomic and cultural rights of Rohingya Refugees in ...Bangladesh. Based on an empirical study at eight different camps in Kutupalong, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, this article documents how the refugees, through different Islamic religious activities and practices, protect their cultural identities, negotiate with the local governing agents, and maintain solidarity with the host communities in their camp lives. This article also describes how, in these camps, many secular humanitarian projects often get challenged, resisted, or rejected by the refugees since those fail to address their networked relations with religion. Drawing from a rich body of literature in forced migrations, socioeconomic human rights, and religious studies in the Global South, this article investigates how religion and religious activities cushion the refugees from different forms of marginalization that are often engendered by secular development agencies. This article further offers several insights for practitioners and policymakers to ensure socioeconomic and cultural integration in human rights activities in refugee camps in the Global South.
This study evaluated the productivity performance of 29 listed commercial banks by employing Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) over the period of 2011-2015. ...Evaluation of productivity performance reveals that Islamic banks, on an average, had relatively higher five year cumulative average TFP change index compared to that of Conventional banks. In addition, Islamic banks reported less variability in its TFP change index compared to Conventional banks. Productivity change index of Islamic bank indicate that it’s failing to sustain the progress made in some years whereas Conventional banks though reported regress during some years but the trend remained consistent. Evaluation of productivity analysis indicates that progress made in TFP was mainly attributed to the increase in efficiency change rather than technological progress. The decomposition of the efficiency change index revealed that the source of the increment was mainly attributed to scale effect.
Classified as a pandemic by the World Health Organization, the novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) has spread to Bangladesh since early March of 2020, and people are getting daily updates from the ...social and electronic media. We aimed at assessing the prevalence of anxiety among Bangladeshi people during the pandemic in connection with social media exposure (SME) and electronic media exposure (EME). For this cross-sectional study, data were collected from 880 participants by a self-administered online-based questionnaire relating personal characteristics, self-rate health (SRH), SME, and EME with anxiety. Findings show that around half of the surveyed population experienced a spike of anxiety (49.1%) during the pandemic, ten times higher than the national anxiety rate in 2019. The participants with an increased SME of over four hours per day experienced a higher level of anxiety than individuals with < = 2 hours exposure to social media. Similarly, the anxiety was higher among people with fair/bad SRH compared to individuals with excellent SRH. It is highly recommended to develop active surveillance and effective monitoring systems to reduce the spread of misinformation from both social and electronic media to improve the state of mental health conditions during the pandemic.
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