The landscape of SME financing and sustainability of SMEs in Bangladesh

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)1 are the dominant form of business organization in all countries, generally representing more than 95% of the business population.OECD recognized that SMEs constitute an important dynamic element in all economies as they drive innovation and play a key role in driving sustainable economic growth, employment creation and poverty reduction, particularly in developing countries.It also contributes to the social, cultural and environmental capital of nations.SMEs are regarded by many governments and international developmental organizations as engines of innovation, economic growth, employment generation and poverty reduction. The role of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is indispensable for overall economic development of a developing country like Bangladesh. Since this sector is labor-intensive with short gestation period, it is capable of increasing national income as well as rapid employment generation of the marginalized people; achieving Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) especially eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, gender equality and women empowerment.SME sector has played a vital role in economic development of some developed countries of Asia especially Japan and Malaysia. Most of the Asian developing countries have also given due importance on SME.Terming SME as „employment generating machine‟ they stressed on SME development for higher economic growth, narrowing the gap of income inequality and poverty alleviation.The present government of Bangladesh has also put much emphasis on the development of SME sector considering it as „the driving force for industrialization‟

Factors Affecting Switching Job from Private University to Public University in Bangladesh

This study aims to investigate the factors that affect prospective employees’ Switching intention form private university to Public University in Bangladesh. The paper also examines relationships among the influential factors and switching behavior. The data of the study have been taken total forty-eight (48) attributes into consideration in designing questionnaire for the study. A questionnaire survey method is used with 240 employees and response rate of 90 percent. Initially an exploratory factor analysis is directed using SPSS (version 21).The results indicated that nine factors where employee satisfaction, pay and promotion, job safety and security, Training and development, Employee empowerment, Future Benefits and Switching Behavior are considered as most influential factors and Job security and safety also influential factor for job performance and employee satisfaction. Comparatively Job performance and working condition have less impact on switching decision. Factors Future benefits pay and promotion and training and development have significant relationship with employee satisfaction except the Working condition issues and Switching behavior. The study deals with the focus on a geographic section of the Bangladeshi public and private university employees. This study sets the authority of Privet University and Government can use the findings to better understand, and satisfy the employee to keep in private university for smooth operation of Private University. Therefore, the findings of the study will help to develop the successful private university management policy and strategies. Keywords: Switching Behavior, Employee Satisfaction, Job performance, Private University, Future benefits and job security

Highly selective and sensitive macrocycle-based dinuclear foldamer for fluorometric and colorimetric sensing of citrate in water.

The selective detection of citrate anions is essential for various biological functions in living systems. A quantitative assessment of citrate is required for the diagnosis of various diseases in the human body; however, it is extremely challenging to develop efficient fluorescence and color-detecting molecular probes for sensing citrate in water. Herein, we report a macrocycle-based dinuclear foldamer (1) assembled with eosin Y (EY) that has been studied for anion binding by fluorescence and colorimetric techniques in water at neutral pH. Results from the fluorescence titrations reveal that the 1·EY ensemble strongly binds citrate anions, showing remarkable selectivity over a wide range of inorganic and carboxylate anions. The addition of citrate anions to the 1·EY adduct led to a large fluorescence enhancement, displaying a detectable color change under both visible and UV light in water up to 2 μmol. The biocompatibility of 1·EY as an intracellular carrier in a biological system was evaluated on primary human foreskin fibroblast (HF) cells, showing an excellent cell viability. The strong binding properties of the ensemble allow it to be used as a highly sensitive, detective probe for biologically relevant citrate anions in various applications

Motivations behind Attending Fitness Clubs in Bangladesh: A Survey Study on Clubs' Members in Sylhet

Fitness club is a place where people join to have physical exercise. Though it has been practicing from the ancient nomadic lifestyles, the fitness industry is experiencing the boom when Dr. Ken H. Cooper in 1968 released his concepts to prevent the growth of chronic diseases, regular exercise and fitness is essential. This study is descriptive in nature and aims to know the reasons for which the fitness club members attend fitness clubs in Sylhet. 200 members were asked several questions, 99 of whom seems physical exercise improves their health conditions, 81 thinks it develop their self-control, 49 found it as an way to gain status, 79 beliefs it helps to stay away from diabetes. The study will helpful to different individuals interested to practice physical exercise, operators and trainers of fitness clubs and also future researchers. Key words: Fitness club, Motivation, Physical Exercise, Physical Accord

Human Resource Management Practices and Operational Performance: An Empirical Study on Kushtia Sugar Mills Ltd

This research is conducted to study human resource management (HRM) practices in the public sector and explore the impact of HRM practices on the operational performance. For this purpose, primary data has been collected through questionnaire from 62 employees working in a state owned entity (SOE) namely Kushtia Sugar Mills Ltd (KSML), which is operating under Bangladesh Sugar and Food Industries Corporation (BSFIC). Simple random sampling was used to select respondents from KSML. Correlation analysis, regression analysis and T-test were carried out to examine the relationship between the selected HRM practices and operational performance of KSML. The analysis of the opinion and perception collected from the respondents revealed that, there is a positive and significant relationship between effective HRM practices (especially recruitment and selection, performance appraisal, involvement and communication and employee relationship) and the operational performance of KSM

Hard Combination Data Fusion for Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio

This paper presents a study of hard combination data fusion for cooperative spectrum sensing in Cognitive Radio (CR). We evaluated the performance of cooperative spectrum sensing with the hard combination OR, AND and MAJORITY rules. Energy detection technique is used to sense the presence of primary user (PU) signal. Simulation result shows that cooperative spectrum sensing with OR rule is the best among hard combination data fusion in Cognitive Radio and gives the better performance than AND and MAJORITY rules.DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijece.v2i6.181

Climate change projection and drought characterization in Bangladesh

One of the biggest threats of the climatic change is aberrant pattern or distribution of rainfall that results to drought. The main objective of this research was to develop a methodological framework to assess the impacts of climate change on seasonal drought characteristics with uncertainty. Bangladesh, one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change was considered as the study area for implementation of the framework. An ensemble of general circulation models (GCMs) of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) were used for downscaling and projection of rainfall and temperature under different Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) scenarios. Two state of art data mining approaches known as Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) were used for the development of downscaling models and Quantile Mapping (QM) approach was used to remove biases in GCMs. The observed and future projected rainfall data were used to characterize the seasonal droughts using Severity-Area-Frequency (SAF) curves developed for different climatic and major crop growing seasons. The results revealed superior performance of SVM in downscaling rainfall and temperature in tropical climate in terms of all standard statistics. Downscaling of CMIP5 GCMs projections revealed a change in annual average rainfall in Bangladesh in the range of -8.6% in the northeast to +11.9% in the northwest, which indicates that spatial distribution of rainfall of Bangladesh will be more homogeneous in future. The maximum and minimum temperatures of Bangladesh were projected to increase in the range of 0.8 to 4.3ºC and 1.0 to 4.8ºC, respectively under different RCPs. Future projection of droughts revealed that affected areas will increase for higher severity and higher return period droughts. Overall, the country will be more affected by higher return period Kharif (May- October) and monsoon droughts, and lower return period pre-monsoon and postmonsoon droughts due to climate change