In many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), including Bangladesh, socioeconomic inequalities in access to maternity care remain a substantial public health concern. Due to the paucity of ...research, we attempted to determine the factors affecting the facility delivery, quantify wealth-related inequality, and identify potential components that could explain the inequality.
We used the latest Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS 2017-18) data in this study. We utilized logistic regression to investigate the associated factors of facility delivery. The concentration curves (CC), concentration index (CIX) and decomposition of CIX techniques were used to analyze the inequality in-facility delivery.
Women living in the urban areas, age at first birth after (18-24 years ≥25 years), being overweight/obese, having secondary and higher-level education of the women and their husband, seeking four or more ANC, coming from more affluent households, and women with high enlightenment were significant determinants of facility delivery. The concentration curve was below the line of equality, and the relative concentration index (CIX) was 0.205 (p <0.001), indicating that women from wealthy groups were disproportionately more prevalent to facility delivery. The decomposition analysis reveals that wealth status of women (57.40%), age at first birth (10.24%), husband's education (8.96%), husband's occupation (7.35%), education of women (7.13%), women's enlightenment (6.15%), residence (8.64%) and ANC visit (6.84%) are the most major contributors to the inequalities in utilizing facility delivery.
The study demonstrates a clear disparity in the use of facility delivery among Bangladeshi women; hence, immediate action is required to lower the inequalities, with a special emphasis on the contributing factors.
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•A novel high-efficiency Nano Composite Membrane Filter from Graphene Oxide (GO) and Banana Rachis Cellulose Nano Crystal (CNC) was fabricated successfully and cost-effectively.•The ...membranes are very much rich with both of the nucleophilic -OH groups as well as familiar with the honeycomb structure of GO, also it has considerable surface area.•The nano composite membrane possesses outstanding filtering/removal performance against Cr3+, Co2+, Ni2+, Pb2+ ,Cd2+ and Methylene blue dye molecules simultaneously.•The membrane showed a very remarkable removal percentages which were about 99.82% for Cd2+, 99.27% for Pb2+, 91.35% for Ni2+ , 90.75% for Co2+and 98.79% for Cr3+ ions respectively which is not possible for conventional membrane.•Also the membrane possesses a very good surface morphology, high crystallinity as well as very impressive thermal stability, remarkable physical barrier property and biodegradability.
Agricultural bio-waste based cellulosic materials are highly biodegradable and naturally occurring with high adsorption and capable of outstanding physico-chemical properties. This study elicits neoteric upliftment and impending significance of graphene oxide(GO) – cellulose nanocrystal(CNC) nano-filter composite membrane (NFCM) for high removal of Cr3+, Co2+, Ni2+, Pb2+, Cd2+ and Methylene blue molecules from industrial wastewater. We tried to direct comparison between conventional filter and NFCM composites filter and their physical and chemical properties, production costs, use and disposal in order to show the potential of Nano structural cellulose materials as a sustainable replacement for NFCM filter for removal of heavy metals and dyes from industrial wastewater treatment technologies. The prepared GO, CNC, and NFCM were characterized by using X-ray Diffraction(XRD), Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR), Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy(FESEM), Thermogravimetric Analysis(TGA) etc. The efficiency of wastewater purification of fabricated NFCM were determined by Ultra Violet(UV)-vis spectrophotometer and Inductively Couple Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy(ICP-OES). Whereas the fabricated NFCM were highly crystalline, thermally stable, have good surface activity, exhibit remarkable removal efficiency against the toxic heavy metals and soluble dye. The maximum R% was found for Cd2+ and Pb2+, around 99%. Beside this all dye molecules were removed from the wastewater simultaneously and successfully.
The application of nanotechnology in pesticide delivery is relatively new and in the early stages of development. This technology aims to reduce the indiscriminate use of conventional pesticides and ...ensure their safe application. This critical review investigated the potential of nanotechnology, especially the nanoencapsulation process for pesticide delivery. In-depth investigation of various nanoencapsulation materials and techniques, efficacy of application, and current research trends are also presented. The focus of ongoing research was on the development of a nanoencapsulated pesticide formulation that has slow releasing properties with enhanced solubility, permeability, and stability. These properties are mainly achieved through either protecting the encapsulated active ingredients from premature degradation or increasing their pest control efficacy for a longer period. Nanoencapsulated pesticide formulation is able to reduce the dosage of pesticides and human exposure to them, which is environmentally friendly for crop protection. However, lack of knowledge of the mechanism of synthesis and lack of a cost-benefit analysis of nanoencapsulation materials hindered their application in pesticide delivery. Further investigation of these materials' behavior and their ultimate fate in the environment will help the establishment of a regulatory framework for their commercialization. The review provides fundamental and critical information for researchers and engineers in the field of nanotechnology and especially the use of nanoencapsulation techniques to deliver pesticides.
•Ecological awareness could fortify scientists to produce multifunctional biosorbent.•Potential fabrication techniques have proposed for ACMNC nanocomposite production.•An innovative route of ...simultaneous abatement of toxicants has also been proposed.•The prospective limitations of previously used conventional methods were identified.•Noteworthy mathematical models to predict the experimental BTC curve have suggested.
As a result of rapid urbanization and the luxurious lifestyle of the overgrowing population of this planet, currently, consumers are tremendously dependent upon various types of industrial productions to maintain their daily life demands. Therefore the hasty fluctuating technologies of bulky industrial production create a colossal amount of wastewater every moment which is usually loaded with hazardous toxicants that could not only damage the ecology but also hamper public health safety very harshly. Thus, a sustainable eco-friendly and cost-effective technique is crucial need for the effective removal of these hazardous toxicants from real-time industrial wastewater to protect the environmental pollution. Whereas continuous mode of adsorption by fixed bed column has widely been considered as the most simple, cost-effective, ecofriendly sustainable technique. Lately, activated chitosan-modified natural clay based nanocomposites have frequently been developed due to their greater availability, easiness of fabrication, also effectiveness, efficiency and biodegradability as multifunctional bionanocomposites/adsorbents. Additionally, this specific new class of biopolymeric nanocomposites exhibits a sensational knock regarding the removal performance of toxicants from the aqueous solutions which is around∼99 %. However, this review article recapitulates noteworthy information about various potential fabrication routes and characterization techniques of the chitosan-clay based bionanocomposites. Also the removal efficiency against the immerging toxicants from the bulk scale industrial wastewater by the most significant and widely accepted method namely fixed bed continuous column adsorption. A squat overview of the chemical activation of waste biomass shell-derived chitosan and modification of natural clay, along with their interaction during compounding. The possible mechanism of elimination of contaminants including all of the chemisorption, multi/monolayer physisorption and interparticular diffusion along with mathematical modellings have presented. Future research route has also been suggested including with the technological challenges that commonly come across in the real-time industrial enactment.
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The stiffness of the extracellular matrix (ECM) plays an important role in controlling cell functions. As an alternative to the ECM, hydrogels of tunable elasticity are widely used for in vitro cell ...mechanobiology studies. Therefore, characterizing the Young's modulus of the hydrogel substrate is crucial. In this paper, we propose a confocal microscopy indentation method for measuring the elasticity of polyacrylamide gel as a model hydrogel. Our new indentation method is based on three-dimensional imaging of the indented gel using confocal microscopy and automated image processing to measure indentation depth from the three-dimensional image stack. We tested and validated our method by indenting polyacrylamide gels of different rigidities with various sphere indentors and by comparing it with the rheometric method. Our measurements show consistent results regardless of the type of the indentors and agree with rheometric measurements. Therefore, the proposed confocal microscopy indentation method can accurately measure the stiffness of hydrogels.
Mobile phones have a large spectrum of applications, aiding in risk prevention and improving health and wellbeing of their owners. So far, however, they have not been used for direct assessment of ...personal exposure to air pollution. In this study, we comprehensively evaluated the first, and the only available, mobile phone-BROAD Life-equipped with air pollution sensors (PM2.5 and VOC), to answer the question whether this technology is a viable option in the quest of reducing the burden of disease to air pollution. We tested its performance, applicability and suitability for the purpose by subjecting it to varied concentrations of different types of aerosol particles (cigarette smoke, petrol exhaust and concrete dust) and formaldehyde under controlled laboratory conditions, as well as to ambient particles during field measurements. Six reference instruments were used in the study: AEROTRAK Optical Particle Counter (OPC model number 9306), DustTrak, Aerodynamic Particle Counter (APS), Scanning Mobility Particle Sizer (SMPS), Tapered Element Oscillating Microbalance (TEOM) and Formaldehyde Analyser. Overall, we found that the phone's response was linear at higher particle number concentrations in the chamber, above 5 and 10 μg m-3, for combustion and concrete dust particles, respectively, and for higher formaldehyde concentrations, making it potentially suitable for applications in polluted environments. At lower ambient concentrations of particles around 10 ug m-3 and 20 μg m-3 for PM2.5 and PM10, respectively, the phone's response was below its noise level, suggesting that it is not suitable for ambient monitoring under relatively clean urban conditions. This mobile phone has a number of limitations that may hinder its use in personal exposure and for continuous monitoring. Despite these limitations, it may be used for comparative assessments, for example when comparing outcomes of intervention measures or local impacts of air pollution sources. It should be kept in mind, however, that a mobile phone measuring air quality alone cannot as such 'reduce the burden of disease to air pollution, as knowing ambient concentrations is only one of the building block in this quest. As long as individuals cannot avoid exposure e.g. in urban areas, knowing concentrations is not sufficient to reduce potential adverse effects. Yet, there are many situations and microenvironments, which individuals could avoid knowing the concentrations and also being aware of the risk caused by exposure to them. This includes for example to proximity to vehicle emissions, either for social purposes (e.g. street cafes) or exercising (e.g. walking or jogging along busy roads)or indoor environments affected by combustion emissions (smoking, candle burning, open fire).
•Structural features for classification.•Evolutionary features for classification.•Effective prediction.•Feature selection.
Determining subcellular localization of proteins is considered as an ...important step towards understanding their functions. Previous studies have mainly focused solely on Gene Ontology (GO) as the main feature to tackle this problem. However, it was shown that features extracted based on GO is hard to be used for new proteins with unknown GO. At the same time, evolutionary information extracted from Position Specific Scoring Matrix (PSSM) have been shown as another effective features to tackle this problem. Despite tremendous advancement using these sources for feature extraction, this problem still remains unsolved. In this study we propose EvoStruct-Sub which employs predicted structural information in conjunction with evolutionary information extracted directly from the protein sequence to tackle this problem. To do this we use several different feature extraction method that have been shown promising in subcellular localization as well as similar studies to extract effective local and global discriminatory information. We then use Support Vector Machine (SVM) as our classification technique to build EvoStruct-Sub. As a result, we are able to enhance Gram-positive subcellular localization prediction accuracies by up to 5.6% better than previous studies including the studies that used GO for feature extraction.
Live animal markets are known hotspots of zoonotic disease emergence. To mitigate those risks, we need to understand how networks shaped by trading practices influence disease spread. Yet, those ...practices are rarely recorded in high-risk settings. Through a large cross-sectional study, we assessed the potential impact of live poultry trading networks' structures on avian influenza transmission dynamics in Bangladesh. Networks promoted mixing between chickens sourced from different farming systems and geographical locations, fostering co-circulation of viral strains of diverse origins in markets. Viral transmission models suggested that the observed rise in viral prevalence from farms to markets was unlikely explained by intra-market transmission alone, but substantially influenced by transmission occurring in upstream network nodes. Disease control interventions should therefore alter the entire network structures. However, as networks differed between chicken types and city supplied, standardised interventions are unlikely to be effective, and should be tailored to local structural characteristics.
Understanding the interaction between in-home and out-of-home activity participation decisions is important, particularly at a time when opportunities for out-of-home activities such as shopping, ...entertainment, and so forth are limited because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The travel restrictions imposed as a result of the pandemic have had a massive impact on out-of-home activities and have changed in-home activities as well. This study investigates in-home and out-of-home activity participation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data comes from the COVID-19 Survey for assessing Travel impact (COST), conducted from March to May in 2020. This study uses data for the Okanagan region of British Columbia, Canada to develop the following two models: a random parameter multinomial logit (RPMNL) model for out-of-home activity participation and a hazard-based random parameter duration (HRPD) model for in-home activity participation. The model results suggest that significant interactions exist between out-of-home and in-home activities. For example, a higher frequency of out-of-home work-related travel is more likely to result in a shorter duration of in-home work activities. Similarly, a longer duration of in-home leisure activities might yield a lower likelihood for recreational travel. Health care workers are more likely to engage in work-related travel and less likely to participate in personal and household maintenance activities at home. The model confirms heterogeneity among the individuals. For instance, a shorter duration of in-home online shopping yields a higher probability for participation in out-of-home shopping activity. This variable shows significant heterogeneity with a large standard deviation, which reveals that sizable variation exists for this variable.
•Investigates individuals’ immediate travel response to COVID-19 restrictions.•Analyzes in-home, out-of-home activities and long-distance travel.•Out-of-home activities were reduced by around 50% ...during COVID-19.•Higher income group is likely to decrease out-of-home activities.•Long distance trips to visit friends and family are likely to be cancelled.
COVID-19 has made unprecedented impacts on our daily life. This paper investigates individuals’ immediate response to COVID-19, exploring out-of-home activities, in-home activities, and long-distance travel. Data for the Kelowna region of Canada comes from a web-based COVID−19 Survey for assessing Travel impact (COST). In addition to analyzing the survey, this research models adjustments in travel decisions by developing ordered logit models for in-home and out-of-home activities, and a binomial logit model for long-distance travel. Data analysis suggests a reduction of about 50% out-of-home activities/day/person during COVID-19 compared to the pre-pandemic period, with the only exception being picking up online orders which significantly increased in frequency. Individuals were engaged in longer duration of in-home activities; the average duration of teleworking, online shopping for groceries and other goods at-home was around 5.5 h/day/person, 32 min/day/person, and 26 min/day/person respectively. The out-of-home activity model results suggest that higher income, younger and middle aged individuals, and full-time workers are more likely to decrease their out-of-home activity; whereas, males, lower income groups, health care professionals, and picking up online orders are more likely to increase. The in-home activity model suggests that older and younger adults, higher and lower income, full-time workers, and highly educated individuals are most likely to increase their in-home activity frequency; in contrast, health care professionals are likely to decrease. Long-distance travel model results reveal that seniors, students, and airline travelers are more likely to reschedule; whereas, trips to visit friends and family are more likely to be cancelled.
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