Metal pollution in sediment from construction areas raises ecological and health concerns, yet source-based sediment pollution in Bangladesh remains understudied. Our investigation focused on fifteen ...locations in the Kohelia River and the coastal regions near the Matarbari projects (Matarbari Power Plant, Matarbari Deep Seaport), assessing metal concentrations' sources and impacts on ecology and human well-being. Sediment quality indices indicated high Cd and Cr contamination, with sites near Matarbari projects being the most polluted. The positive matrix factorization model identified three anthropogenic sources and mixed sources. Matarbari projects contributed significantly to As (67.9 %), Mn (50.25 %), Cd (48.35 %), and Cr (41.0 %), while ship-breaking yards contributed Fe (58.0 %), Zn (55.5 %), Pb (53.8 %), and Cu (36.1 %). Ecological indices showed different impacts on aquatic life from metal pollution, but cancer risk levels stayed below the threshold set by the US Environmental Protection Agency. These findings underscore the need for targeted measures to address metal pollution.
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•Sediment quality indices were used to compare metal contents.•PMF model was applied for metal source apportionment.•Matarbari Projects and ship breaking yards were identified as potential sources of metals.•The pollution had serious negative impacts on ecosystem and human well-being.
Children with malnutrition present with aberrant laboratory parameters. This study aimed to identify high-risk diarrheal children with varied nutritional status. The data were obtained from the ...electronic database of Dhaka Hospital, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh from 2019 to 2021. Among 1,068 children under 5 years of age with diarrhea, 177 (14%) had severe acute malnutrition (SAM; weight-for-length/height Z score < -3), 239 children (17%) had severe stunting (SS; length/height-for-age Z score < -3), and 652 did not have malnutrition (weight-for-length/height and weight-for-age and length/height-for-age Z score > -2). We independently assessed the relationship of nutritional profiles with each clinical and laboratory parameter. After adjustment for age and sex in the multiple regression model, hyponatremia (adjusted odds ratio aOR = 2.37 95% CI: 1.52-3.68; P < 0.001) and dehydration (aOR = 2.42 95% CI: 1.67-3.52; P < 0.001) were independently associated with SAM compared with children without malnutrition. In comparison to non-malnutrition, SS was less likely to be associated with acute watery diarrhea (aOR = 0.66 95% CI: 0.47-0.92; P = 0.014) but was significantly associated with anemia (aOR = 2.18 95% CI: 1.57-3.02; P < 0.001) and thrombocytosis (aOR = 2.43 95% CI: 1.78-3.32; P < 0.001). The presence of hypernatremia was substantially lower in children with SAM (aOR = 0.38 95% CI: 0.22-0.65; P < 0.001) or SS (aOR = 0.56 95% CI: 0.35-0.88; P = 0.012) than in children without malnutrition. Severe stunting was less likely to be associated with dehydration (aOR = 0.44 95% CI: 0.29-0.67; P < 0.001) in contrast to SAM. Therefore, children hospitalized with diarrhea may have different clinical and laboratory manifestations depending on their nutritional status and may require differential treatment.
Secure potable water is indispensable to life. The presence of salinity in potable water has become a serious problem worldwide and it is essential to ensure secure potable water, particularly in the ...coastal areas of Bangladesh. In this work, 48 (forty-eight) harvested rainwater samples were assessed from Upazila (sub-district) of Mongla and Sarankhola, Bagerhat district, Bangladesh during the monsoon (May) and post-monsoon (October) periods. The objective was to examine the effect of seasonal variations on the quality of harvested rainwater. The harvested rainwater was analyzed for fecal coliform, total coliform, lead (Pb), zinc (Zn), pH, and turbidity. The mean pH in monsoon and post-monsoon periods was 6.93 and 7.24, respectively, which was within both the WHO guideline and Bangladesh Drinking Standard. In the monsoon season, turbidity levels in samples met the Bangladesh water quality standard but 10% of the harvested rainfall samples had Pb levels that exceeded the WHO drinking water limit. The turbidity of harvested rainwater in post-monsoon exceeded the WHO and Bangladesh Drinking Standard by 21% (10 out of 48) and 6% (3 out of 48), respectively. The fecal coliform of harvested rainwater exceeded both WHO and Bangladesh Drinking Standard by 56% (27 out of 48) and 67% (32 out of 48) in the monsoon and post-monsoon, correspondingly. Conversely, total coliform of harvested rainwater exceeded both the WHO and Bangladesh Drinking Standard by 67% (32 out of 48) and 79% (38 out of 48), accordingly in the monsoon and post-monsoon seasons. The Zn was below the WHO and Bangladesh Drinking Standard but Pb exceeded the WHO guideline in the monsoon and post-monsoon by 15% (7 out of 48) and 17% (8 out of 48), respectively. Pb is toxic to humans and children are especially vulnerable. The harvested rainwater should be treated effectively to reduce the toxicity and danger posed by Pb, fecal coliform, and total coliform before it is fit for drinking purposes.
Application of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) is expected to have a significant impact on traffic safety and mobility. Although several studies evaluated the effectiveness of CAVs in a small ...roadway segment, there is a lack of studies analyzing the impact of CAVs in a large-scale network by considering both freeways and arterials. Therefore, the objective of this study is to analyze the effectiveness of CAVs at the network level by utilizing both vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication technologies. Also, the study proposed a new signal control algorithm through V2I technology to elevate the performance of CAVs at intersections. A car-following model named cooperative adaptive cruise control was utilized to approximate the driving behavior of CAVs in the Aimsun Next microsimulation environment. For the testbed, the research team selected Orlando central business district area in Florida, U.S. To this end, the impacts of CAVs were evaluated based on traffic efficiency (e.g., travel time rate TTR, speed, and average approach delay, etc.) and safety surrogates (e.g., standard deviation of speed, real-time crash-risk models for freeways and arterials, time exposed time-to-collision). The results showed that the application of CAVs reduced TTR significantly compared with the base condition even with the low market penetration level. Also, the proposed signal control algorithm reduced the approach delay for 94% of the total intersections present in the network. Moreover, safety evaluation results showed a significant improvement of traffic safety in the freeways and arterials under CAV conditions with different market penetration rates.
Natural pigments and colorants have seen a substantial increase in use over the last few decades due to their eco-friendly and safe properties. Currently, customer preferences for more natural ...products are driving the substitution of natural pigments for synthetic colorants. Filamentous fungi, particularly ascomycetous fungi (
,
,
, and
), have been shown to produce secondary metabolites containing a wide variety of pigments, including β-carotene, melanins, azaphilones, quinones, flavins, ankaflavin, monascin, anthraquinone, and naphthoquinone. These pigments produce a variety of colors and tints, including yellow, orange, red, green, purple, brown, and blue. Additionally, these pigments have a broad spectrum of pharmacological activities, including immunomodulatory, anticancer, antioxidant, antibacterial, and antiproliferative activities. This review provides an in-depth overview of fungi gathered from diverse sources and lists several probable fungi capable of producing a variety of color hues. The second section discusses how to classify coloring compounds according to their chemical structure, characteristics, biosynthetic processes, application, and present state. Once again, we investigate the possibility of employing fungal polyketide pigments as food coloring, as well as the toxicity and carcinogenicity of particular pigments. This review explores how advanced technologies such as metabolic engineering and nanotechnology can be employed to overcome obstacles associated with the manufacture of mycotoxin-free, food-grade fungal pigments.
Wet salting preservation is commonly practiced to preserve raw hide/skin which discharges high salinity wastewater during soaking operation of hide/skin processing. The saline wastewater ...significantly pollutes the environment. In this study, a novel plant‐based approach has been made to preserve the goatskin to reduce pollution in tannery wastewater. The Ficus hispida plant leaf paste with a minimal amount of common salt was applied on the flesh side of raw goatskin. Efficacy of the method was evaluated by scrutinizing thermal stability, hair slip, odor, moistness percentage, Total Kjeldahl Nitrogen, and bacterial count in comparison with the conventional wet salting preservation method for 28 days. Pollution load in the wastewater, for example, total dissolved solids (TDS), total suspended solids (TSS), chloride (Cl−), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and chemical oxygen demand (COD) was measured following the APHA method. Results indicate that the novel plant‐based method has decreased the pollution load of Cl−, TDS, TSS, BOD, and COD in the tannery wastewater by 51.02%, 41.6%, 37.1%, 2.9%, and 14.6%, respectively. Leather produced from the experimentally preserved goatskin illustrates similar physical properties in comparison to the leather produced from conventionally preserved goatskin. The proposed preservation technique of goatskin in combination with lower salt might be an ecological alternative that could decrease the pollution load especially in soaking operation.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends intravenous (IV) ampicillin and gentamicin as first-line therapy to treat severe pneumonia in children under five years of age. Ampicillin needs to be ...administered at a six-hourly interval, which requires frequent nursing intervention and bed occupancy for 5-7 days, limiting its utility in resource-poor settings. We compared the efficacy of IV amoxicillin over IV ampicillin, which is a potential alternative drug in treating severe pneumonia in children between 2-59 months. We conducted an unblinded, randomized, controlled, non-inferiority trial in the Dhaka hospital of icddr,b from 1 January 2018 to 31 October 2019. Children from 2-59 months of age presenting with WHO defined severe pneumonia with respiratory danger signs were randomly assigned 1:1 to either 50 mg/kg ampicillin or 40 mg/kg amoxicillin per day with 7.5 mg/kg gentamicin. The primary outcome was treatment failure as per the standard definition of persistence of danger sign(s) of severe pneumonia beyond 48 h or deterioration within 24 h of therapy initiation. The secondary outcomes were: (i) time required for resolution of danger signs since enrolment, (ii) length of hospital stay, (iii) death during hospitalization, and (iv) rate of nosocomial infections. Among 308 enrolled participants, baseline characteristics were similar among the two groups. Sixty-two (20%) children ended up with treatment failure, 21 (14%) in amoxicillin, and 41 (27%) in ampicillin arm, which is statistically significant (relative risk RR 0.51, 95% CI 0.32-0.82;
= 0.004). We reported 14 deaths for serious adverse events, 4 (3%) and 10 (6%) among amoxicillin and ampicillin arm, respectively. IV amoxicillin and IV gentamicin combination is not inferior to combined IV ampicillin and IV gentamicin in treating severe pneumonia in under-five children in Bangladesh. Considering the less frequent dosing and more compliance, IV amoxicillin is a better choice for treating children with severe pneumonia in resource-limited settings.
Images under low-light conditions suffer from noise, blurring, and low contrast, thus limiting the precise detection of objects. For this purpose, a novel method is introduced based on convolutional ...neural network (CNN) dual attention unit (DAU) and selective kernel feature synthesis (SKFS) that merges with the Retinex theory-based model for the enhancement of dark images under low-light conditions. The model mentioned in this paper is a multi-scale residual block made up of several essential components equivalent to an onward convolutional neural network with a VGG16 architecture and various Gaussian convolution kernels. In addition, backpropagation optimizes most of the parameters in this model, whereas the values in conventional models depend on an artificial environment. The model was constructed using simultaneous multi-resolution convolution and dual attention processes. We performed our experiment in the Tesla T4 GPU of Google Colab using the Customized Raw Image Dataset, College Image Dataset (CID), Extreme low-light denoising dataset (ELD), and ExDark dataset. In this approach, an extended set of features is set up to learn from several scales to incorporate contextual data. An extensive performance evaluation on the four above-mentioned standard image datasets showed that MSR-MIRNeT produced standard image enhancement and denoising results with a precision of 97.33%; additionally, the PSNR/SSIM result is 29.73/0.963 which is better than previously established models (MSR, MIRNet, etc.). Furthermore, the output of the proposed model (MSR-MIRNet) shows that this model can be implemented in medical image processing, such as detecting fine scars on pelvic bone segmentation imaging, enhancing contrast for tuberculosis analysis, and being beneficial for robotic visualization in dark environments.
The main objective of this study is to assess the impacts of cooking and indoor air quality (IAQ) in the southwestern region of Bangladesh. Here we report and compare the IAQ in considering a total ...of eight kitchens and living rooms of four selected households (HHs) in Jashore city and suburb area, the southwest district of Bangladesh. Air quality parameters, such as particulate matter (PM2.5) and volatile organic compounds (VOC), were assessed continuously for 24 h. In addition, Carbon dioxide (CO2) was evaluated in different phases during the study period. PM2.5, VOC, and CO2 levels were ranged from 18.52 to 207 μg/m3, 7.95–35.66 ppm, and 1061–2459 mg/m3, respectively, in the indoor cooking HHs. Conversely, while the average concentration was found between 20.63 and 23.72 μg/m3 PM2.5, 11.18–12.36 ppm VOC, and 1097–1747 mg/m3 CO2 in the outdoor cooking HHs. A significant increase in CO2 due to kitchen activities (cooking, frying, boiling) was observed that ranged between 5 and 77% compared to the background level. The calculated range of toxicity potential (TP) values was between 0.8 and 8.3 for PM2.5 in the HHs. In most of the observations, PM2.5, VOC, and CO2 exceed the standard values. The study reports that well ventilation systems and clean fuel use significantly reduce the indoor air contaminants level. Our study offers new insights about the IAQ of the southwest region of Bangladesh, particularly for suburbs and urban setups, and provides a background for further study, and decision-making. It will serve as a reference for the formulation and implementation of policies to improve air quality.
As COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, the major focus of healthcare organizations shifted towards preparing healthcare systems to handle the inevitable COVID-19 burden at different phases and ...levels. A series of in-person training programs were operated in collaboration with government and partner organizations for the healthcare workers (HCW) of Bangladesh. This study aimed to assess the knowledge of HCWs regarding SARS-CoV-2 infection, their case management, infection prevention and control to fight against the ongoing pandemic. As a part of the National Preparedness and Response Plan for COVID-19 in Bangladesh, the training program was conducted at four district-level hospitals and one specialized hospital in Bangladesh from July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021. A total of 755 HCWs participated in the training sessions. Among them, 357 (47%) were enrolled for the evaluation upon completion of the data, collected from one district hospital (Feni) and one specialized hospital (National Institute of Mental Health). The mean percentage of pre-test and post-test scores of all the participants were found to be 57% (95% CI 8.34-8.91; p 0.01) and 65% (95% CI 9.56-10.15; p <0.001) respectively. The difference of score (mean) between the groups was significant (p<0.001). After categorizing participants' knowledge levels as poor, average and fair, doctors' group has shown to have significant enhancement from level of average to fair compared to that of the nurses. Factors associated with knowledge augmentation of doctors were working in primary health care centers (aOR: 4.22; 95% CI: 1.80, 9.88), job experience less than 5 years (aOR: 4.10; 95% CI: 1.01, 16.63) and experience in caring of family member with COVID-19 morbidity (aOR: 2.06; 95% CI: 1.03, 4.10), after adjusting for relevant covariates such as age, sex and prior COVID-19 illness. Considering the series of waves of COVID-19 pandemic with newer variants, the present paper underscores the importance of implementing the structured in-person training program on case management, infection prevention and control for the HCWs that may help for successful readiness prior to future pandemics that may further help to minimize the pandemic related fatal consequences.
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