Sustainability Reporting Practices: A Study of Selected Banking Companies of Bangladesh

This study examines the current reporting practices of sustainability issues of Bangladeshi Banks. This paper examines the annual report of 2016 of selected Private Commercial Banks (PCBs) in consideration of GRI G4 guidelines. This study has found that 100% of the sample bank has participated in sustainability reporting. Most reported sectors are labor, product responsibility, energy, emission. Most of the banks have used a separate section in annual report for sustainability reporting. Mostly narrative disclosures have been used by most of the banks. Even though banks have reported about different issues mentioned in G4, most of the disclosure lacks specificity and clear initiatives. Keywords: Sustainability, Reporting, GRI, Disclosure, Private Commercial Banks

Effects of cyberbullying on college-going girls in Tangail Sadar: Nature, causes, and consequences

Cyberbullying has turned into a vital issue in the recent world. Especially, girls are the main victim of cyberbullying.  This study has focused on the nature, causes, and effects as well as identifying the relationship between spent time on social media and the effects of cyberbullying on college girl students in Tangail Sadar. 153 students between the ages of 16 and 19 served as the study's respondents and a mixed approach was employed. Multistage sampling and purposive sampling methods are used, Survey and interview techniques are used to gather data from the respondents. The study reveals that cyberbullying emerges most commonly from a low mentality towards girls, revenge, for having fun or entertainment, social media activities, clothing of girls, lack of morality, etc. and most of the bullying is related to messaging, sexual harassment, spreading rumors, comments, disclosing private info, sending unwanted images or videos type of cyberbullying; Victims experience bad effects as consequences, especially on their psychology (stress, depression and impact on their academic life). Cyberbullying is a type of bullying that does not need any strong reason to have occurred because the offender stays confidential in the cyber world. Therefore, our government must be conscious of solving this issue

動的温度条件下における地表付近の土壌中のVOCの気相拡散輸送における水の役割

Tohoku University渡邉則昭課

Hilsha Fish Marketing Strategies in Dhaka City of Bangladesh

The study was conducted to find out hilsha fish marketing system in Dhaka city of Bangladesh. Hilsha fish (Tenualosa ilisha) is the national fish our country and all people like this fish on their meal but due to lack of proper marketing system maximum people remain out of touch of this fish. We found that Hilsha fish comes to Dhaka city maintaining a strong marketing channel member such fishermen, faria, bapari, aratder and finally goes to consumer plate through retailer. For identifying   marketing  pattern and pricing strategies of the Hilsha   I have chosen  sample size containing 60 respondents(10 fishermen, 10 aratders,10 beparies, 10faria  and 20 retailers) and collected data   from  Jatrabari, Showarighat, Kawranbazar, Savar Kachabazar, Banani Kachabazar, Mirpur, Uttara , Krishi market,Baipal bazaar and Lunchghat of Chandpur  through questionnaire. I found that net marketing margin for per mound (40kg) varies according to channel member such as Retailer(Tk2750.5), aratder(Tk417.5), faria (Tk1791.5),  Bepari (Tk1580.5) and retailers  get maximum share of profit  margin. The marketing cost per mound (40kg) for retailer (449.5), aratder(702.5), faria(908.5), Bepari (1210.5). Price determined   at retail market based on market condition, bargaining of retailers and consumers. Fishermen  and  aratder  arrange   an auction  method for  selling their fish  as well as  faria follows open bargaining, auction and  market going price. I have also  found that Hilsh fish is so much  demanding to people  all over the world and still sold at high priced but  fishermen can not  receive  reasonable price due to  involvement of mahajons (money lenders) who  enforced fishermen  to sell  at prefixed rate as a result economic conditions of the fishermen  are not changing

Financial Profitability and Resource Use Efficiency of Broiler Farming in a Selected Area of Bangladesh

The present study was undertaken to investigate the socio-economic characteristics of the broiler farmers, to estimate the costs, returns and profitability of broiler enterprise and to determine the contribution of the key variables to the production of broiler farms in some selected locations of Dhaka district, Bangladesh. It was mainly done on primary data which were collected through face to face interview from the respondents of broiler production in 2014. 80 broiler farm owners were selected by using simple sample randomly technique.  Both tabular and econometric techniques were used to find out the results. The results of the analysis showed that on average total cost of broilers per farm per year was Tk. 301142.103. It was found that the variable cost per farm per year stood at Tk. 238728.73 which accounted for 79.28 percent of total cost. The total fixed cost per farm per year accounted to Tk. 62413.373. The net return over total cost per farm per year was calculated at Tk. 130257.90. The benefit cost ratios of broiler farming were 1.80 on variable cost basis and 1.43 on total cost basis. The functional analysis indicated that most of the selected variables had significant impact on the production of broiler farms. This study also identified some economic, marketing, technical, social and natural problems in broiler production. Finally, on the basis of findings of this study, some recommendations were made for the development of broiler farming in Bangladesh

Effect of omega 3 fatty acid in infertile males with oligozoospermia

Background: Oligozoospermia is the cause of male infertility in 33.3% of cases. Omega-3 fatty acid has been utilized in infertility because of its widespread availability, low cost, and high safety profile. We intended to conduct a study to evaluate the efficacy of omega-3 fatty acid in oligozoospermia. Methods: A prospective comparative study was conducted in the outdoor of the department of reproductive endocrinology and infertility, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU), Dhaka, from July 2022 to August 2023. A total of 70 Infertile males with oligozoospermia, were enrolled in the study. The participants were assigned to the omega-3 fatty acid group who was treated with omega-3 fatty acid 1 gm orally twice daily for 12 weeks. The other group was treated with placebo orally twice daily for 12 weeks. Sixty patients completed the 12 weeks of treatment. The changes in sperm count were determined. Results: The mean age of the participants was 35.6±4.59 years. Following treatment with omega-3 fatty acid significant improvement was observed in sperm count from 11.10±2.81 million/ml to 34.2±31.36 million/ml. Significant improvement in total motile sperm count was also observed. At the end of 12 weeks of treatment 76.7% of participants in the omega 3 fatty acid group and 10.0% in the placebo group had normozoospermia. Conclusions: Supplementation with omega-3 fatty acid results in improvement of sperm concentration and total motile sperm count in infertile men with oligozoospermia

Flower visitation by hoverflies (Diptera: Syrphidae) in a temperate plant-pollinator network

Hoverflies (Diptera: Syrphidae) are among the most important pollinators, although they attract less attention than bees. They are usually thought to be rather opportunistic flower visitors, although previous studied demonstrated that they show colour preferences and their nectar feeding is affected by morphological constraints related to flower morphology. Despite the growing appreciation of hoverflies and other non-bee insects as pollinators, there is a lack of community-wide studies of flower visitation by syrphids. The aim of this paper is to provide a detailed analysis of flower visitation patterns in a species rich community of syrphids in a Central European grassland and to evaluate how species traits shape the structure of the plant-hoverfly flower visitation network. We found that different species varied in the level of specialisation, and while some species visited a similar spectre of flowers, others partitioned resources more strongly. There was a consistent difference in both specialisation and flower preferences between three syrphid subfamilies. Eristalinae and Pipizinae were more specialised than Syrphinae. Trait-based analyses showed that relative flower visitation (i) increased with plant height, but most strongly in Eristalinae; (ii) increased with inflorescence size in small species from all three subfamilies, but was independent of inflorescence size in large species of Eristalinae and Syrphinae; and (iii) depended on flower colour, but in a subfamily-specific way. Eristalinae showed the strongest flower colour preferences for white flowers, Pipizinae visited mostly white and yellow flowers, while Syrphinae were less affected by flower colour. Exploration of the structure of the plant-hoverfly flower visitation network showed that the network was both modular and nested. We also found that there were almost no differences in specialisation and relative visitation frequency between males and females. Overall, we showed that flower visitation in syrphids was affected by phylogenetic relatedness, body size of syrphids and several plant traits

Experimental loss of generalist plants reveals alterations in plant-pollinator interactions and a constrained flexibility of foraging

Species extinctions undermine ecosystem functioning, with the loss of a small subset of functionally important species having a disproportionate impact. However, little is known about the effects of species loss on plant-pollinator interactions. We addressed this issue in a field experiment by removing the plant species with the highest visitation frequency, then measuring the impact of plant removal on flower visitation, pollinator effectiveness and insect foraging in several sites. Our results show that total visitation decreased exponentially after removing 1–4 most visited plants, suggesting that these plants could benefit co-occurring ones by maintaining high flower visitor abundances. Although we found large variation among plant species, the redistribution of the pollinator guild affected mostly the other plants with high visitor richness. Also, the plant traits mediated the effect of removal on flower visitation; while visitation of plants which had smaller inflorescences and more sugar per flower increased after removal, flower visitors did not switch between flower shapes and visitation decreased mostly in plants visited by many morpho-species of flower visitors. Together, these results suggest that the potential adaptive foraging was constrained by flower traits. Moreover, pollinator effectiveness fluctuated but was not directly linked to changes of flower visitation. In conclusion, it seems that the loss of generalist plants alters plant-pollinator interactions by decreasing pollinator abundance with implications for pollination and insect foraging. Therefore, generalist plants have high conservation value because they sustain the complex pattern of plant-pollinator interactions

Comparison of combined disc synergy test and double disc synergy test for phenotypic detection of metallo-ß-lactamase among the clinical isolates of gram-negative bacilli

Background: Metallo-β-lactamases (MBL) have a wide spectrum of activity and they confer a higher level of resistance to all β-lactams antibiotics including Carbapenem. The active site in MBLs contains either 1 or 2 Zn2+ ions for their catalytic mechanism. All MBLs share a common feature of being inhibited by EDTA. Metallo-β-lactamase-producing gram-negative bacteria are the most important nosocomial pathogens. The present study was conducted to detect Metallo-β-lactamase (MBL) production in gram-negative bacilli by Combined Disc Synergy Test (CDST) and Double Disc Synergy Test (DDST) with 0.1M EDTA as a chelator and to see their antibiotic susceptibility pattern of them.Methods: The cross-sectional observational study was carried out in the Department of Microbiology, Chittagong Medical College, during the period of July 2015 to June 2016. Samples were collected from patients admitted to CMCH. Standard Microbiological procedures and biochemical tests were carried out for the isolation and identification of MBL. SPSS software is used for data analysis.Results: When 66 screening positive MBL isolates were subjected to the phenotypic confirmatory test CDST detected 50 (25.4%) and DDST detected 48 (24.4%) as MBL producers. Among these isolates, we found Acinetobacter spp. 7 (100%), as the leading MBL producer followed by Pseudomonas spp. 16 (32.6%), E. coli 10 (20%) and Klebsiella spp. 15 (17.4%).Conclusions: In a laboratory where multiplex PCR molecular set-up is not available CDST and DDST are convenient phenotypic methods and can be implemented in routine microbiological laboratories as well as in primary health care setup for daily application to monitor the production of MBLs