Modeling and Analyzing Cyber-Physical Systems Using Hybrid Predicate Transition Nets

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) are software controlled physical devices that are being used everywhere from utility features in household devices to safety-critical features in cars, trains, aircraft, robots, smart healthcare devices. CPSs have complex hybrid behaviors combining discrete states and continuous states capturing physical laws. Developing reliable CPSs are extremely difficult. Formal modeling methods are especially useful for abstracting and understanding complex systems and detecting and preventing early system design problems. To ensure the dependability of formal models, various analysis techniques, including simulation and reachability analysis, have been proposed in recent decades. This thesis aims to provide a unified formal modeling and analysis methodology for studying CPSs. Firstly, this thesis contributes to the modeling and analysis of discrete, continuous, and hybrid systems. This work enhances modeling of discrete systems using predicate transition nets (PrTNs) by fully realizing the underlying specification through incorporating the first-order logic with set theory, improving the type system, and providing incremental model composition. This work enhances the technique of analyzing discrete systems using PrTN by improving the simulation algorithm and its efficient implementation. This work also improves the analysis of discrete systems using SPIN by providing a more accurate and complete translation method. Secondly, this work contributes to the modeling and analysis of hybrid systems by proposing an extension of PrTNs, hybrid predicate transition nets (HPrTNs). The proposed method incorporates a novel concept of token evolution, which nicely addresses the continuous state evolution and the conflicts present in other related works. This work presents a powerful simulation capability that can handle linear, non-linear dynamics, transcendental functions through differential equations. This work also provides a complementary technique for reachability analysis through the translation of HPrTN models for analysis using SpaceEx

Evaluating Flood Damage using GIS and RADARSAT data-A case of the 1998 Catastrophe in Greater Dhaka, Bangladesh

The objective of this paper is to delineate flood prone areas and estimate damage in Greater Dhaka during the 1998 catastrophic flood using an integrated approach of GIS and remote sensing. Time series RADARSAT SAR data is acquired and used to demarcate flood boundaries for the 1998 flood event. This was accomplished by thresholding linear SAR imageries. Flood estimation demonstrated that flood areas steadily increased from early July 1998 and peaked on 25 August 1998 inundating 53% lands due to heavy monsoonal downpour and discharge from upstream points. Different thematic layers were combined with a derived flood map in order to assess flood damage for the same event. Flood damage analysis revealed that substantial damage has occurred in Greater Dhaka during the 1998 flood

Remote Sensing of 1998 and 2000 Floods in Greater Dhaka, Bangladesh: Experiences from Catastrophic and Normal events

This paper is an attempt to develop a series of maps that precisely depict flood prone areas in Greater Dhaka, Bangladesh using remote sensing techniques. Multi-temporal RADARSAT SAR data were acquired and employed to delineate open water flood boundary during the floods of 1998 and 2000. Using a threshold algorithm, SAR data is segregated into water and non-water areas. The empirical threshold value was obtained by using visual interpretation technique, local knowledge of the study site and by deriving corresponding pixel values to land/water from each image. The result demonstrated that 53 percent of the study area was heavily inundated in 1998 flood which is the largest submerged area during a catastrophic scenario. In contrast, 35.32 percent area was flooded during the year 2000 which represents the area under water for a normal event. Using the reference data acquired from field visit, derived flood maps were further validated. Moderate accuracy is obtained for all flood maps, however, July 1998 image attained the highest overall accuracy (86%) in the dataset. The derived flood maps are expected to be useful to mitigate losses of lives and property from river water flooding in Greater Dhaka. Furthermore, this information would be worthwhile to develop an efficient flood disaster management system

Mental disorders in Bangladesh: a systematic review

Background Mental disorders constitute a major public health problem globally with higher burden in low and middle-income countries. In Bangladesh, systematically-collected data on mental disorders are scarce and this leaves the extent of the problem not so well defined. We reviewed the literature on mental health disorders in Bangladesh to summarize the available data and identify evidence gaps. Methods We identified relevant literature on mental disorders within Bangladesh published between 1975 and October, 2013 through a systematic and comprehensive search. Relevant information from the selected articles was extracted and presented in tables. Results We identified 32 articles which met our pre-defined eligibility criteria. The reported prevalence of mental disorders varied from 6.5 to 31.0% among adults and from 13.4 to 22.9% among children. Some awareness regarding mental health disorders exists at community level. There is a negative attitude towards treatment of those affected and treatment is not a priority in health care delivery. Mental health services are concentrated around tertiary care hospitals in big cities and absent in primary care. Conclusions The burden of mental disorders is high in Bangladesh, yet a largely unrecognized and under-researched area. To improve the mental health services in Bangladesh, further well-designed epidemiological and clinical research are needed

Climate Change and Corporate Environmental Responsibility

Climate change, as an international environmental issue, is getting a lot of attention. The negative effects of climate change have become one of the most talked about issues among Governments, scientists, environmentalists and others. It is said that business activities are affecting the climate negatively. In order to minimize the negative effects of climate change, the activities of the businesses should be controlled and encouraged to perform in a socially responsible manner. The article focuses on the responsibilities and the responses of businesses on climate change issues. The article first highlights on two prominent issues: Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Environmental Responsibility. Then the article introduces climate change as an international environmental concern. Then, by going through several published literature, the article highlights various responsibilities of business towards climate change issues. The article also highlights the several strategies the businesses are following to respond to the climate change issues

Climate Change and Corporate Environmental Responsibility

Climate change, as an international environmental issue, is getting a lot of attention. The negative effects of climate change have become one of the most talked about issues among Governments, scientists, environmentalists and others. It is said that business activities are affecting the climate negatively. In order to minimize the negative effects of climate change, the activities of the businesses should be controlled and encouraged to perform in a socially responsible manner. The article focuses on the responsibilities and the responses of businesses on climate change issues. The article first highlights on two prominent issues: Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Environmental Responsibility. Then the article introduces climate change as an international environmental concern. Then, by going through several published literature, the article highlights various responsibilities of business towards climate change issues. The article also highlights the several strategies the businesses are following to respond to the climate change issues

CNN-XGBoost fusion-based affective state recognition using EEG spectrogram image analysis

Recognizing emotional state of human using brain signal is an active research domain with several open challenges. In this research, we propose a signal spectrogram image based CNN-XGBoost fusion method for recognising three dimensions of emotion, namely arousal (calm or excitement), valence (positive or negative feeling) and dominance (without control or empowered). We used a benchmark dataset called DREAMER where the EEG signals were collected from multiple stimulus along with self-evaluation ratings. In our proposed method, we first calculate the Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) of the EEG signals and convert them into RGB images to obtain the spectrograms. Then we use a two dimensional Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) in order to train the model on the spectrogram images and retrieve the features from the trained layer of the CNN using a dense layer of the neural network. We apply Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) classifier on extracted CNN features to classify the signals into arousal, valence and dominance of human emotion. We compare our results with the feature fusion-based state-of-the-art approaches of emotion recognition. To do this, we applied various feature extraction techniques on the signals which include Fast Fourier Transformation, Discrete Cosine Transformation, Poincare, Power Spectral Density, Hjorth parameters and some statistical features. Additionally, we use Chi-square and Recursive Feature Elimination techniques to select the discriminative features. We form the feature vectors by applying feature level fusion, and apply Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) classifiers on the fused features to classify different emotion levels. The performance study shows that the proposed spectrogram image based CNN-XGBoost fusion method outperforms the feature fusion-based SVM and XGBoost methods. The proposed method obtained the accuracy of 99.712% for arousal, 99.770% for valence and 99.770% for dominance in human emotion detection.publishedVersio

Social and economic impact of diabetics in Bangladesh: protocol for a case-control study

Background: Diabetes affects both individuals and their families and has an impact on economic and social development of a country. Information on the availability, cost, and quality of medical care for diabetes is mostly not available for many low-and middle-income countries including Bangladesh. Complications from diabetes, which can be devastating, could largely be prevented by wider use of several inexpensive generic medicines, simple tests and monitoring and can be a cost saving intervention. This study will provide an in-depth and comprehensive picture of social and economic impacts of diabetes in Bangladesh and propose clear recommendations for improving prevention and management of diabetes. The objectives of the study are: 1) To study the association between diabetes and other health problems and its social impacts 2) To estimate the economic impact of diabetes including total direct and indirect costs 3) To measure the impact of diabetes on quality of life among diabetes patients in Bangladesh 4) To study the impact of diabetes on the health care system Methods: This is a case-control study comparing cases with type 2 diabetes to controls without diabetes matched on age, sex and place of residence. 564 cases and 564 controls will be selected from the outpatient department of a tertiary hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Data on socioeconomic status, health utility index, direct and indirect costs for diabetes, medication adherence, quality of life, treatment satisfaction, diet, physical activity, mental state examination, weight, height, hip and waist circumference, blood pressure, pulse, medication history, laboratory data and physical examination will be conducted. Outcome measures: The primary outcome measures will be association between diabetes and other health problems, cost of diabetes, impact of diabetes on quality of life and secondary outcome measures are impact of diabetes on healthcare systems in Bangladesh. Discussion: This study will provide an in-depth and comprehensive picture of social and economic impacts of diabetics in Bangladesh and propose clear recommendations for improving prevention and management of diabetics. It will help to develop programs and policies for better management of Diabetics and cost effective strategies in Bangladesh context

Use of the new World Health Organization child growth standards to describe longitudinal growth of breastfed rural Bangladeshi infants and young children.

BACKGROUND: Although the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reference has been widely used, in 2006 the World Health Organization (WHO) released new standards for assessing growth of infants and children worldwide. OBJECTIVE: To assess and compare the growth of breastfed rural Bangladeshi infants and young children based on the new WHO child growth standards and the NCHS reference. METHODS: We followed 1343 children in the Maternal and Infant Nutrition Intervention in Matlab (MINIMat) study from birth to 24 months of age. Weights and lengths of the children were measured monthly during infancy and quarterly in the second year of life. Anthropometric indices were calculated using both WHO standards and the NCHS reference. The growth pattern and estimates of undernutrition based on the WHO standards and the NCHS reference were compared. RESULTS: The mean birthweight was 2697 +/- 401 g, with 30% weighing <2500 g. The growth pattern of the MINIMat children more closely tracked the WHO standards than it did the NCHS reference. The rates of stunting based on the WHO standards were higher than the rates based on the NCHS reference throughout the first 24 months. The rates of underweight and wasting based on the WHO standards were significantly different from those based on the NCHS reference. CONCLUSIONS: This comparison confirms that use of the NCHS reference misidentifies undernutrition and the timing of growth faltering in infants and young children, which was a key rationale for constructing the new WHO standards. The new WHO child growth standards provide a benchmark for assessing the growth of breastfed infants and children