Wetland Conservation in Context of Climate Induced Changes: Bangladesh Perspective

Geographic location and Geo-morphological conditions of Bangladesh have made the country one of the most weather vulnerable ones to wetlands in context of climate induced changes. Bangladesh is a land of wetland which occupies around 50% of the country. Wetlands play a crucial role in maintaining the ecological balance of ecosystems and cultural figures as well, but wetland habitats of Bangladesh is under constant threats due to climate induced changes and anthropogenic activities. Climate change, however, is causing acceleration in the rise of sea level, which would seemingly put wetlands at risk of excessive calamities. Drought, excessive temperature, mountain snowfields and glaciers melting, riverbank erosion, salinity intrusion, flash-flood, storm surges, higher water temperature, magnitude of precipitation change, coastal cyclones. Seasonal anomalies and extremes are main threats to the wetland ecosystem. As a result biodiversity is reducing, many species of flora and fauna are threatened, wetlands-based ecosystem is degenerating, and the living conditions of local people are deteriorating as livelihoods, socioeconomic institutions, and extensive cultural values as well. Technology, legislation, educational knowledge, action plan strategy, conservation practices are required to manage wetlands. Therefore, Bangladesh now needs a comprehensive approaches, strategy and integrated system combining political, economic, social, technological and institutional supports to address sustainable wetland conservation and the newly added crisis, climate change

Web Search Engine Misinformation Notifier Extension (SEMiNExt): A Machine Learning Based Approach during COVID-19 Pandemic

Misinformation such as on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) drugs, vaccination or presentation of its treatment from untrusted sources have shown dramatic consequences on public health. Authorities have deployed several surveillance tools to detect and slow down the rapid misinformation spread online. Large quantities of unverified information are available online and at present there is no real-time tool available to alert a user about false information during online health inquiries over a web search engine. To bridge this gap, we propose a web search engine misinformation notifier extension (SEMiNExt). Natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithm have been successfully integrated into the extension. This enables SEMiNExt to read the user query from the search bar, classify the veracity of the query and notify the authenticity of the query to the user, all in real-time to prevent the spread of misinformation. Our results show that SEMiNExt under artificial neural network (ANN) works best with an accuracy of 93%, F1-score of 92%, precision of 92% and a recall of 93% when 80% of the data is trained. Moreover, ANN is able to predict with a very high accuracy even for a small training data size. This is very important for an early detection of new misinformation from a small data sample available online that can significantly reduce the spread of misinformation and maximize public health safety. The SEMiNExt approach has introduced the possibility to improve online health management system by showing misinformation notifications in real-time, enabling safer web-based searching on health-related issues

Antioxidant activities of different parts of Musa sapientum L. ssp. sylvestris fruit

Musa sapientum L. ssp. sylvestris (Family: Musaceae) is a popular edible fruit. It is used by the traditional healers in the treatment of diarrhoea and dysentery. In the present study, methanolic extracts of peel (MSPE), pulp (MSPU) and seed (MSSE) of the fruit were investigated for in vitro antioxidant activity using DPPH (1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl) radical scavenging capacity, reducing power, CUPRAC (Cupric Reducing Antioxidant Capacity) and total antioxidant capacity. The phenolic content of the extracts were also determined. The plant extracts showed a direct concentration dependent increase in scavenging DPPH radical. MSSE showed better scavenging activity than MSPE and MSPU with an IC value of 54.92 μg/ml, while the standard antioxidant, ascorbic acid, showed an IC value of 13.75 μg/ml. The Fe/ferricyanide to ferrous and cupric ion reduction capacity of MSSE were better than the reference agent ascorbic acid. All three extracts showed good results in total antioxidant assay. MSSE was also found to contain good amount of phenols (244.38 mg/g of plant extract in GAE). The results of this study indicate that MSSE has strong in vitro antioxidant activity

Chowdhury et al., 2009 Stamford Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences

Infrared spectroscopic characterization, free radical scavenging and cytotoxic evaluation of chitosan extracted from Penaeus monodon shell

Oral Healthcare during Pregnancy: Its Importance and Challenges in Lower-Middle-Income Countries (LMICs)

Oral health is essential in general health and well-being to maintain overall quality of life [...

Increased DNA damage in blood cells of rat treated with lead as assessed by comet assay

A growing body of evidence suggests that oxidative stress is the key player in the pathogenesis of lead-induced toxicity. The present study investigated lead-induced oxidative DNA damage, if any in rat blood cells by alkaline comet assay. Lead was administered intraperitoneally to rats at doses of 25, 50 and 100 mg/kg body weight for 5 days consecutively. Blood collected on day six from sacrificed lead-treated rats was used to assess the extent of DNA damage by comet assay which entailed measurement of comet length, olive tail moment, tail DNA (%) and tail length. The results showed that treatment with lead significantly increased DNA damage in a dose-dependent manner. Therefore, our data suggests that lead treatment is associated with oxidative stress-induced DNA damage in rat blood cells which could be used as an early bio-marker of lead-toxicity