Wireless Health Monitoring using Passive WiFi Sensing

This paper presents a two-dimensional phase extraction system using passive WiFi sensing to monitor three basic elderly care activities including breathing rate, essential tremor and falls. Specifically, a WiFi signal is acquired through two channels where the first channel is the reference one, whereas the other signal is acquired by a passive receiver after reflection from the human target. Using signal processing of cross-ambiguity function, various features in the signal are extracted. The entire implementations are performed using software defined radios having directional antennas. We report the accuracy of our system in different conditions and environments and show that breathing rate can be measured with an accuracy of 87% when there are no obstacles. We also show a 98% accuracy in detecting falls and 93% accuracy in classifying tremor. The results indicate that passive WiFi systems show great promise in replacing typical invasive health devices as standard tools for health care.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, conference pape

Climate Change Impact: The Experience of the Coastal Areas of Bangladesh Affected by Cyclones Sidr and Aila

Bangladesh is considered one of the countries most at risk to the effects of climate change and its coastal area is most vulnerable. This study tries to explore the experiences of cyclones Sidr and Aila affected people living in the coastal areas of Bangladesh. This study was conducted in the cyclone Sidr affected Amtali Upazila of Barguna District and in the cyclone Aila affected Koyra Upazila of Khulna District. Primary data collection was done using Focus Group Interview and then a thematic analysis approach was used for analysis. Three core themes emerged from the analysis and they are, firstly, impacts of climate change on the socioeconomic condition of the people, secondly, the impact on the health status of the population, and finally the impact on vulnerable people. Findings show that the effects of climate change have serious consequences on the livelihood patterns of the affected population and on their overall health status. As a result, the unfavorable health condition of these affected people makes them more vulnerable to various emerging diseases

Gastrointestinal Disorder Detection with a Transformer Based Approach

Accurate disease categorization using endoscopic images is a significant problem in Gastroenterology. This paper describes a technique for assisting medical diagnosis procedures and identifying gastrointestinal tract disorders based on the categorization of characteristics taken from endoscopic pictures using a vision transformer and transfer learning model. Vision transformer has shown very promising results on difficult image classification tasks. In this paper, we have suggested a vision transformer based approach to detect gastrointestianl diseases from wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) curated images of colon with an accuracy of 95.63\%. We have compared this transformer based approach with pretrained convolutional neural network (CNN) model DenseNet201 and demonstrated that vision transformer surpassed DenseNet201 in various quantitative performance evaluation metrics

Characterization Analysis of Textured and Diffused Monocrystalline Silicon Wafer

This paper focuses on examining the characteristic analysis of the textured and diffused silicon wafer. Characterization performance of the textured and diffused wafer using surface reflection method, sheet resistance method, SEM, and surface photovoltage method is examined. From the SRM result, it is observed that the reflection of the textured wafer is lower than the raw wafer. This means that the textured wafer forms the pyramid structure, which was measured by SEM. Sheet resistance measures the resistivity of the raw wafer and after phosphorous diffusion into the p-type silicon, the wafer are 2.3 Ω-cm and 0.80 Ω-cm respectively. From the sheet resistance results, it is observed that the phosphorus doping is properly done. The Surface Photovoltage (SPV) result shows that minority carrier diffusion length and lifetime for a solar cell is 86.4μm and 2.8 μsec respectively

Mutations in phosphodiesterase 6 identified in familial cases of retinitis pigmentosa.

To delineate the genetic determinants associated with retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a hereditary retinal disorder, we recruited four large families manifesting cardinal symptoms of RP. We localized these families to regions on the human genome harboring the α and β subunits of phosphodiesterase 6 and identified mutations that were absent in control chromosomes. Our data suggest that mutations in PDE6A and PDE6B are responsible for the retinal phenotype in these families

Epidemiology of childhood and adolescent cancer in Bangladesh, 2001-2014

Background: Cancer burden among children and adolescents is largely unknown in Bangladesh. This study aims to provide a comprehensive overview on childhood and adolescent cancers and to contribute to the future strategies to deal with these diseases in Bangladesh. Methods: Data on malignant neoplasms in patients aged less than 20years diagnosed between 2001 and 2014 (N=3143) in Bangladesh was collected by the National Institute of Cancer Research and Hospital and ASHIC Foundation. The age pattern and distribution of cancer types were analysed and the incidence rates were calculated. Results: The age-standardised incidence rate was 7.8 per million person-years for children (0-14 years) in the last time period (2011-2014). Retinoblastoma (25%) and leukaemia (18%) were the most common childhood cancers. For adolescents (15-19 years), the age-specific incidence rate was 2.1 per million person-years in the same time period. Most common adolescent cancers were malignant bone tumours (38%), germ cell and gonadal tumours (17%), and epithelial tumours (16%). There were more boys affected (M: F ratio 2.0 in children and 1.4 in adolescents) than girls. Conclusion: Cancer incidences were lower than expected most likely due to a low level of awareness about cancer among clinicians and the population, inadequate access to health care, lack of diagnostic equipment and incomplete recording of cases. Improvements on different levels should be made to get a better epidemiologic insight and to detect cancer earlier resulting in a better outcome for affected chil

Socio-demographic risk factors for severe malnutrition in children aged under five among various birth cohorts in Bangladesh

Tackling malnutrition is a major health priority for a developing country like Bangladesh. This study explored the differences in prevalence of having only one form, and multiple forms, of severe malnutrition (stunting, wasting and underweight) among under-5 children in Bangladesh, and aimed to identify the important factors affecting these. Data were extracted from the Bangladesh Demographic Health Surveys conducted in 2007, 2011 and 2014. The outcome measures were ‘only one form’ and ‘multiple forms’ of severe malnutrition in children aged under 5 years. A Chi-squared test was performed to find the association of outcome variables with selected socio-demographic factors and logistic regression models were applied to identify risk factors. A total of 19,874 children aged under 5 years were included in the analysis. The overall proportion with one form of severe child malnutrition was approximately 12%, and the proportion with multiple forms was 8%. Age, mother’s education, father’s occupation, mother currently working, watching television, source of water, solid waste used in cooking, intimate partner violence (IPV), wealth index, urban/rural place of residence and birth cohort were found to be significant factors for both having only one and having multiple forms of severe child malnutrition. Children with an uneducated mother of poor socioeconomic class had a higher risk of severe malnutrition. Children of fathers with a professional occupation were at lower risk of having multiple forms of severe malnutrition. The proportions of children aged under 5 years with one or multiple forms of severe malnutrition were shown to be high in Bangladesh. The prevention of malnutrition in the country should be seen as a significant public health issue and given top priority