3,392 research outputs found
Atiqur Rahman: Selected Poems
No full textA collection of selected poems by Bangladeshi poet, Atiqur Rahman. It brings together 16 of his poems in Bengali original and in English translation
Environmental sustainability of fashion product made from post-consumer waste: impact across the life cycle
No full textThe fashion industry has a detrimental environmental impact throughout its supply chain operations that needs immediate attention. Limited work focuses on measuring the environmental sustainability of clothing products made from post-consumer waste in the circular economy. This research aims to evaluate the environmental sustainability of fashion products made from post-consumer waste using the Higg Index tool developed by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. Three t-shirt manufacturers—namely factory A (LEED certified), factory B (non-LEED certified), and factory C (Sub-contract) were considered as case studies. Data were collected through practice-based qualitative questions to manufacturing practitioners, which were supplemented by triangulations, and scores were obtained using the Higg Index product environmental sustainability tool. The findings highlight significant variations in most subsection analyses for product environment sustainability dimensions, scoring 369.5 (73.9%), 277.6 (55.5%), and 153.5 (30.7%) out of 500 by factories A, B, and C, respectively. Findings reveal significant differences in scores (from low to high) for the three t-shirt manufacturers. Various subsections revealed deficiencies in actual policies including product design, materials selection, manufacturing operations, and priorities regarding subcategories. Products made in a green factory and embracing the circular economy achieved the highest score, while the sub-contractor factory product obtained the lowest score. Findings highlight poor and emerging sustainable practices, identify challenges, and suggest improvement in the above-mentioned categories. The research urges stakeholders to embrace sustainable practices for fashion products to reduce environmental impact through life cycle stages and benefit the industry
Preface
No full textIntroduces Atiqur Rahman, discusses his poems and explains the techniques used in translating them from Bengali to English. The central themes of Atiqur Rahman's poems are discussed in certain detail
HID 2022: the 3rd International Competition on Human Identification at a Distance
No full textThe paper provides a summary of the Competition on Human Identification at a Distance 2022 (HID 2022), which is the third one in a series of competitions. HID 2022 is for promoting the research in human identification at a distance by providing a benchmark to evaluate different methods. The competition attracted 112 valid registered teams. 71 teams and 51 teams submitted their results in the first phase and the second phase, respectively. Very encouraging results have been achieved, and the accuracies of the top teams are much higher than those achieved in the previous two competitions. In this paper, we introduce the competition including the dataset, experimental settings, competition organization, results from the top teams and their analysis. The methods used by the top teams are also presented in the paper. The progress of this competition can give us an optimistic view on gait recognition. </p
Parkinson’s Disease Diagnosis in Cepstral Domain Using MFCC and Dimensionality Reduction with SVM Classifier
No full textParkinson’s disease (PD) is one of the most common and serious neurological diseases. Impairments in voice have been reported to be the early biomarkers of the disease. Hence, development of PD diagnostic tool will help early diagnosis of the disease. Additionally, intelligent system developed for binary classification of PD and healthy controls can also be exploited in future as an instrument for prodromal diagnosis. Notably, patients with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) represent a good model as they develop PD with a high probability. It has been shown that slight speech and voice impairment may be a sensitive marker of preclinical PD. In this study, we propose PD detection by extracting cepstral features from the voice signals collected from people with PD and healthy subjects. To classify the extracted features, we propose to use dimensionality reduction through linear discriminant analysis and classification through support vector machine. In order to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, we also developed ten different machine learning models. It was observed that the proposed method yield area under the curve (AUC) of 88%, sensitivity of 73.33%, and specificity of 84%. Moreover, the proposed intelligent system was simulated using publicly available multiple types of voice database. Additionally, the data were collected from patients under on-state. The obtained results on the public database are promising compared to the previously published work
Current concepts on oxidative/carbonyl stress, inflammation and epigenetics in pathogenesis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
No full textChronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a global health problem. The current therapies for COPD are poorly effective and the mainstays of pharmacotherapy are bronchodilators. A better understanding of the pathobiology of COPD is critical for the development of novel therapies. In the present review, we have discussed the roles of oxidative/aldehyde stress, inflammation/immunity, and chromatin remodeling in the pathogenesis of COPD. An imbalance of oxidants/antioxidants caused by cigarette smoke and other pollutants/biomass fuels plays an important role in the pathogenesis of COPD by regulating redox-sensitive transcription factors (e.g., NF-κB), autophagy and unfolded protein response leading to chronic lung inflammatory response. Cigarette smoke also activates canonical/alternative NF-κB pathways and their upstream kinases leading to sustained inflammatory response in lungs. Recently, epigenetic regulation has been shown to be critical for the development of COPD because the expression/activity of enzymes that regulate these epigenetic modifications have been reported to be abnormal in airways of COPD patients. Hence, the significant advances made in understanding the pathophysiology of COPD as described herein will identify novel therapeutic targets for intervention in COPD
Environmental toxicity, redox signaling and lung inflammation:the role of glutathione
No full textGlutathione (gamma-glutamyl-cysteinyl-glycine, GSH) is the most abundant intracellular antioxidant thiol and is central to redox defense during oxidative stress. GSH metabolism is tightly regulated and has been implicated in redox signaling and also in protection against environmental oxidant-mediated injury. Changes in the ratio of the reduced and disulfide form (GSH/GSSG) can affect signaling pathways that participate in a broad array of physiological responses from cell proliferation, autophagy and apoptosis to gene expression that involve H(2)O(2) as a second messenger. Oxidative stress due to oxidant/antioxidant imbalance and also due to environmental oxidants is an important component during inflammation and respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and asthma. It is known to activate multiple stress kinase pathways and redox-sensitive transcription factors such as Nrf2, NF-kappaB and AP-1, which differentially regulate the genes for pro-inflammatory cytokines as well as the protective antioxidant genes. Understanding the regulatory mechanisms for the induction of antioxidants, such as GSH, versus pro-inflammatory mediators at sites of oxidant-directed injuries may allow for the development of novel therapies which will allow pharmacological manipulation of GSH synthesis during inflammation and oxidative injury. This article features the current knowledge about the role of GSH in redox signaling, GSH biosynthesis and particularly the regulation of transcription factor Nrf2 by GSH and downstream signaling during oxidative stress and inflammation in various pulmonary diseases. We also discussed the current therapeutic clinical trials using GSH and other thiol compounds, such as N-acetyl-l-cysteine, fudosteine, carbocysteine, erdosteine in environment-induced airways disease
Fashion circularity: potential of reusing and recycling remnant fabric to create sustainable products
No full textThe textile and fashion industry produce a significant amount of solid waste annually. Most of this waste is either disposed of or burned; very little is reused. This research investigates the potential of reusing and recycling remnant fabric to create sustainable luxury fashion products in a circular economy. Focusing on three factories namely Factory A, Factory B, and Factory C, this study analyzes product diversification, capacity, capital investment, supply chain dynamics, and manufacturing operations. A qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews with industry practitioners from the case factories was employed. Data from purchasing orders, production reports, inventory reports, and monthly invoices were analyzed. The factories manufactured a range of sustainable products, emphasizing floor mats, ladies’ handbags, and bedding items (pillow covers). The analysis revealed that each factory achieved a 30–40% profit margin on their monthly sales. Notably, approximately 95% of the remnant fabric was recycled in the production process, with merely 5% being discarded and resold for further use. These findings indicate local employment opportunities and substantial contributions to socio-economic advancement. This study recommends adopting a circular economy model to generate new business opportunities and income streams from remnant fabric. It encourages new financial investment and technical innovations to promote growth in this sector and benefit wider stakeholders
Retailers satisfaction level on Airtel Bangladesh Limited
No full textThis internship report is submitted in a partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Business Administration,2014.Cataloged from PDF version of Internship report.Includes bibliographical references (page 63).Airtel is the sixth telecom operators in Bangladesh. This company is the subsidiary of Telecommunications Company Airtel India in Bangladesh .Airtel Bangladesh Limited is one of the fastest growing mobile services providers in Bangladesh and is a concern of Bharti Airtel Limited, a leading global telecommunications services provider. The company offers a wide array of innovative mobile services, including voice, value added services, data and m-commerce products and is focused on expanding its state-of-the-art mobile network both for coverage and capacity. Since, all of the operators are offering almost same categories of products it has become a big challenge to retain the existing subscribers and acquisition of new customers. At this moment Airtel is trying to reach the Retailers with various promotional activities and is attempting to make their brand presence felt. Through their significant advances in Bangladesh, Airtel is moving ahead on the track to achieve their goals. As a student BBA program, I got the opportunity to complete my internship program in such a multinational telecom company. The internship program is the partial requirement of my BBA program and the duration of the internship session was 3 months. I worked in the central sales department at Dhaka -1 Zone of Airtel Bangladesh. The report has been prepared in align with my job responsibilities and experiences at Airtel. I have conducted a research survey among Airtel retailers who sells both SIM and recharge. After that I have designed the research in a descriptive way and collected data are analyzed quantitatively. The research findings show that there are several factors that make the retailers dissatisfied regarding Airtel. Insufficient SIM delivery, Poor network quality, delay on SIM replacement, poor commission structure and bad internet service etc. are the areas for customer dissatisfaction. On the other hand, the retailers are satisfied for the low call rate of prepaid connection, higher commission payment, availability of the prepaid Ezee load, tariffs of the prepaid packages, lives enriching value added service, and for customer supports after sales. However, the overall analysis describes that the most of the Airtel prepaid subscribers are moderate subscribers. At the end of the project, some recommendations are given to help the Airtel management so that they can deploy appropriate decisions to reduce the retailer’s dissatisfaction.Muhammad Atiqur RahmanB. Business Administratio
Studies on apolipoprotein E and high cholesterol diet as risk factors for neurodegeneration
No full textElevated level of plasma cholesterol is a well-established risk factor for cardiovascular disease, and emerging evidence suggest that it plays a role in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease (AD). The relations between dietary habits and neurodegeneration are complex, as the brain is selectively separated from peripheral circulation by the blood brain barrier (BBB). Brain cholesterol is mostly independent from dietary uptake or hepatic synthesis and is almost completely synthesized in situ. The enzymatic conversion of cholesterol into 24S-hydroxycholesterol, which fluxes across the BBB into the circulation is the recognized pathway for the elimination and the homeostasis maintenance of brain cholesterol.Apolipoprotein E (apoE) is the major cholesterol transporter in the central nervous system (CNS). From the three human isoforms of apoE (E2, E3 and E4), the presence of apoE4 is the most important known genetic risk factor for sporadic AD and it has also been linked to many other forms of neurodegeneration. The mechanisms by which apoE4 increases the risk for neurodegeneration are largely unknown, but it has been hypothesised that apoE4 may have a deficient function compared with other isoforms. In general, there is a lack of knowledge of how different risk factors affect neurodegenerative disorders, and also of the possible synergistic effect of several risk factors contributing together to these processes.The work presented in this thesis aims to investigate the mechanisms involving apoE and high cholesterol (HQ diet in neurodegenerative processes. As a model we used wild type (WT) and apoE deficient mice on normal diet or HC diet for 9 months. We have found that HC diet stimulates glial activation and increases expression of IL-6 and caspase-1, and that these effects are potentiated by the apoE deficiency (papers I and II). HC diet also upregulates the expression of antioxidant enzyme NQO1 (paper I). In addition, we found that the combination of HC diet and apoE deficiency induces tau hyperphosphorylation and increases the activity of several tau kinases in the brain (paper III). Finally, we used cDNA microarrays to explore the effects of HC diet on brain gene expression. We found that a high cholesterol intake affects the expression of several genes involved in neurodegeneration (paper IV).The present study give insight to the molecular mechanisms by which HC diet and lack of apoE increase the risk for neurodegeneration and suggest that several risk factors may act synergically in these processes.List of scientific papersI. Crisby M, Rahman SMA, Sylven C, Winblad B, Schultzberg M (2004). Effects of high cholesterol diet on gliosis in apolipoprotein E knockout mice. Implications for Alzheimers disease and stroke. Neurosci Lett. 369(2): 87-92. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15450674II. Rahman SMA, Van Dam AM, Schultzberg M, Crisby M (2005). High cholesterol diet results in increased expression of interleukin-6 and caspase-1 in the brain of apolipoprotein E knockout and wild type mice. J Neuroimmunol. 169(1-2): 59-67. Epub 2005 Sep 29 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16198427III. Rahman SMA, Akterin S, Flores-Morales A, Crisby M, Kivipelto M, Schultzberg M, Cedazo-Minguez A (2005). High cholesterol diet induces tau hyperphosphorylation in apolipoprotein E deficient mice. FEBS Lett. 579(28): 6411-6. Epub 2005 Nov 2 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16288750IV. Akterin S, Rahman SMA, Kivipelto M, Crisby M, Schultzberg M, Flores-Morales A, Cedazo-Minguez A (2005). Effects of high cholesterol diet on gene expression in mice brain. [Manuscript]</p
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