Creating Opportunities to Developing Leadership in Private Sector Enterprises of Bangladesh-A Study in Airlines/ Shipping/Freight Forwarding Industry

Developing and nurturing leadership is become very popular concept now a days. Big corporation at least understand the hidden benefit of focusing into this very important agenda for long term sustainability of business. We have experienced that organizations is automatically moving even if there is sudden demise of the owner. It happens because of the system developed through creating, retaining and nurturing leadership to create successor within the organizations. Over the years, the mind set was isolated with one man show to run everything by one individual regrettable when the owner is the signatory of all bills and vouchers to strategic decisions. This point probably gets more focus when the employee also understands and realized the necessity of growth and advancement in professions. So the perception and reality is a win-win expectation arises behind the focus to creating leadership opportunities in organizations. This article exhibits the means and opportunities to creating, developing & nurturing leadership by private sector organizations in Bangladesh giving a particular focus in airlines, shipping lines & supply chain and freight forwarding logistics companies working in Bangladesh as international joint –venture and licensing agents. This also focused on the factors related with the Leadership development, the end benefit that organizations dreamt to attain from leadership development and suggestion to take more initiatives in particular attentions. The article has been designed through structures questionnaire from about 150 employees of midlevel, senior level, and executive level including human resources managers on the employee views on current practices. The hypothesis developed in four grades related to the study objective. There is group discussion and practical work experiences of the author with one of the largest supply chain and freight forwarding logistics company operating in 21 countries around the globe. The data has been presented in an understandable way of descriptive analysis through mean, mode and standard deviation so that it might be more meaningful to contribute the relevancy of the study. Keywords: Leadership, feedback, technique, airlines, shipping lines, freight forwardin

Demutualization: Pros and Cons for Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE)

The purpose of this study is to examine the implications of demutualization for Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE). And this is done by examining the existing literature for the stock exchanges that have already been demutualised. The result of the study indicates that all benefits that go with demutualization are not applicable for Bangladesh. Rather the benefits are contingent upon some factors unique to Bangladesh. So in the process of demutualization the authorities concerned should focus on those factors from which optimum benefits can be derived. However, demutualization is not without risk. So along with benefits risk should be focused on so that appropriate policy can be formed that will ensure successful implementation of demutualization. This study is important to investors, academics and policy makers as it demonstrates what benefits demutualization will bring and what challenges it will create. Since demutualization is a very new concept in Bangladesh, the study extends the literature by demonstrating its pros and cons in the context of Bangladesh. Key Words: Demutualization, Mutual Organization, Corporate Governance

Factors Affecting the Stock Price Movement: A Case Study on Dhaka Stock Exchange

Stock market is the mirror of the economy of any country. The strength of the economy reflects in the stock market numeric value. After crisis and fall down in different time over years Bangladesh Stock Market is going to settle in a slow speed. Investors are hoping a strong stock market and management beyond political influential and invincible hands. There may exist hundred or thousand causes and events to bring effect on stock price in the capital market of Bangladesh. The study has selected 17 variables which appear to be effective for the movement of stock price in Bangladesh capital market. From the 17 variables through SPSS dimension reduction (or factor analysis) the study got 5 core factors which affect the stock price. The obtained factors are: Industry Performance, Market Influences, Company Performance, Investor Decision, and Financial Consideration. Also to see the effect of selected variable on stock price movement, one variable – EPS is tested with stock price to see the effect. The result came that EPS is highly correlated to stock price movement in the capital market. As we have got different factors can affect the stock price movement. But investor should protect himself from the bad result of these factors. For this, before and after in stock market business the investors should consider about three main things which are acknowledged fully with company information & performance, risk management and continuous monitoring of stock performance. Keywords: Dhaka Stock Exchange, Fundamental factors, Ideal Price of Stock, EPS, Stock Price, Stock Price Movement

Service Gaps of a Banking System: A case study on Basic Bank

Financial liberalization has led to intense competitive pressures and private banks dealing in retail banking are consequently directing their strategies towards increasing service quality level which fosters customer satisfaction and loyalty through improved service quality. This article examines the influence of perceived service quality on customer satisfaction. In this paper, we have used SERVQUAL as a technique to measure service quality and identify gaps in a BASIC Bank. The results of this study showed that there are service quality gaps between customers' expectations and their perceptions in six dimensions. In this issue paying attention to the effective factors on customers' expectations and its relationship with services quality is one of the important issues of the evaluation of services quality. For this purpose, the recent research was performed based on gap analysis model with the purpose of investigating the quality of banking services on the level of BASIC Bank. It was concluded after determining the desirable services from the standpoints of the customers (investigating customers' expectations) and its effective factors and also the examination of the current status of services quality (customers' understandings) that BASIC Bank responses to customers' expectations in all of the branches under investigation and the understood services quality has been always more than services quality expected by the customers. Keywords: Service Gap, Service Quality, SERVQUAL Model, Service Quality Gap, Perceived Service

Behavior of Low Grade Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete Made with Fresh and Recycled Brick Aggregates

In recent years, recycled aggregates from construction and demolition waste (CDW) have been widely accepted in construction sectors as the replacement of coarse aggregate in order to minimize the excessive use of natural resources. In this paper, an experimental investigation is carried out to observe the influence of low grade steel fiber reinforcements on the stress-strain behavior of concrete made with recycled and fresh brick aggregates. In addition, compressive strength by destructive and nondestructive tests, splitting tensile strength, and Young’s modulus are determined. Hooked end steel wires with 50 mm of length and an aspect ratio of 55.6 are used as fiber reinforcements in a volume fraction of 0% (control case), 0.50%, and 1.00% in concrete mixes. The same gradation of aggregates and water-cement ratio (w/c=0.44) were used to assess the effect of steel fiber in all these concrete mixes. All tests were conducted at 7, 14, and 28 days to perceive the effect of age on different mechanical properties. The experimental results show that around 10%～15% and 40%～60% increase in 28 days compressive strength and tensile strength of steel fiber reinforced concrete, respectively, compared to those of the control case. It is observed that the effect of addition of 1% fiber on the concrete compressive strength is little compared to that of 0.5% steel fiber addition. On the other hand, strain of concrete at failure of steel fiber reinforced concrete has increased almost twice compared to the control case. A simple analytical model is also proposed to generate the ascending portions of the stress-strain curve of concrete. There exists a good correlation between the experimental results and the analytical model. A relatively ductile failure is observed for the concrete made with low grade steel fibers

Pre-existing COPD is associated with an increased risk of mortality and severity in COVID-19: a rapid systematic review and meta-analysis

Objectives: The objective of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to investigate COVID-19 mortality and severity among patients with pre-existing COPD. Methods: We performed systematic searches in Ovid Medline, Embase via Ovid, PubMed, and Scopus from 15 December 2019 to 7 July 2020. Studies which reported the association and presented data on risk estimate (Hazard Ratio [HR]) with 95% confidence intervals (95%CIs) were extracted. A random-effects model was used to obtain the pooled estimates, and a pooled Risk Ratio (RR) was calculated. Study quality was assessed using a modified version of the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. Results: Our meta-analysis showed an increased likelihood of mortality in COVID-19 patients with pre-existing COPD (RR 3.18, 95% CI 2.11-4.80, HR 1.90, 95%CI 1.11-3.26). Furthermore, the pooled estimate for the association between pre-existing COPD and severity due to COVID-19 was also significant (RR 3.63, 95%CI 2.48-5.31). Males had an increased risk of mortality (RR 1.20, 95%CI 1.12-1.29) compared to females. Conclusion: We found that patients with pre-existing COPD had more than 3 times higher risk of mortality and severe COVID-19. There is a need to identify patients with pre-existing COPD during the pandemic so that early interventions can be aimed at this group of patients. **Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Muhammad Aziz Rahman” is provided in this record*

Excellency of Hydroxyapatite Composite Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Engineering

The hydroxyapatite [HAp, Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2] has a variety of applications in bone fillers and replacements due to its excellent bioactivity and osteoconductivity. It comprises the main inorganic component of hard tissues. Among the various approaches, a composite approach using several components like biopolymer, gelatin, collagen, and chitosan in the functionalization of scaffolds with HAp has the prospective to be an engineered biomaterial for bone tissue engineering. HAp composite scaffolds have been developed to obtain a material with different functionalities such as surface reactivity, bioactivity, mechanical strength, and capability of drug or growth factor delivery. Several techniques and processes for the synthesis and fabrication of biocompatible HAp composite scaffolds suitable for bone regeneration are addressed here. Further, this chapter described the excellences of various HAp composite scaffolds used in in vitro and in vivo experiments in bone tissue engineering

EnHMM: On the Use of Ensemble HMMs and Stack Traces to Predict the Reassignment of Bug Report Fields

Bug reports (BR) contain vital information that can help triaging teams prioritize and assign bugs to developers who will provide the fixes. However, studies have shown that BR fields often contain incorrect information that need to be reassigned, which delays the bug fixing process. There exist approaches for predicting whether a BR field should be reassigned or not. These studies use mainly BR descriptions and traditional machine learning algorithms (SVM, KNN, etc.). As such, they do not fully benefit from the sequential order of information in BR data, such as function call sequences in BR stack traces, which may be valuable for improving the prediction accuracy. In this paper, we propose a novel approach, called EnHMM, for predicting the reassignment of BR fields using ensemble Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), trained on stack traces. EnHMM leverages the natural ability of HMMs to represent sequential data to model the temporal order of function calls in BR stack traces. When applied to Eclipse and Gnome BR repositories, EnHMM achieves an average precision, recall, and F-measure of 54%, 76%, and 60% on Eclipse dataset and 41%, 69%, and 51% on Gnome dataset. We also found that EnHMM improves over the best single HMM by 36% for Eclipse and 76% for Gnome. Finally, when comparing EnHMM to Im.ML.KNN, a recent approach in the field, we found that the average F-measure score of EnHMM improves the average F-measure of Im.ML.KNN by 6.80% and improves the average recall of Im.ML.KNN by 36.09%. However, the average precision of EnHMM is lower than that of Im.ML.KNN (53.93% as opposed to 56.71%).Comment: Published in Proceedings of the 28th IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER 2021), 11 pages, 7 figure

Hematological and biochemical reference values of Asian house shrews (Suncus murinus) in Bangladesh

Background and Aim: Determining reference values for hematological and biochemical parameters of Asian house shrew (Suncus murinus) is important for wildlife research to protect human health in surrounding communities. This study aimed to establish the reference values for selected hematology and serum clinical chemistry analyses that may contribute to research on shrew in future. Materials and Methods: Blood samples (n=51) were collected from shrews between July and December 2015, Bangladesh, to estimate the levels of hemoglobin (Hb), packed cell volume (PCV), total leukocyte count (TLC), total erythrocyte count (TEC), lymphocyte, monocyte, neutrophil, eosinophil, basophil, calcium, phosphorus (P), sodium (Na), chloride (Cl), urea, glucose, total protein (TP), creatinine, and alanine transaminase (ALT). Results: Although the values did not differ significantly among sexes, age was found to be a significant factor. Hb, PCV, TEC, glucose, and P were higher in males; eosinophil, Na, Cl, TP, and ALT were higher among females. Adults had significantly greater urea and glucose (p<0.05) while juveniles had insignificantly higher values for TLC, PCV, neutrophil, P, and TP. Conclusion: This study provides the first reference values for this species in Bangladesh and can be used to guide wildlife research studies. Keywords: Asian house shrew, hematology, reference interval, serum chemistry, Suncus murinus