Women’s participations in economic and NGO activities in Bangladesh: an empirical study on the Bangladesh Demography and Health Survey (BDHS)

This study examines key factors affecting the economic involvement of women in Bangladesh and women’s involvement with Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) operating in that country. Quantitative analysis was utilised to explore data contained in the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Surveys 2007 and 2011. The findings indicate that age, marital status, number of children living in the household, place of residence, geographical location, education, partner’s education and the wealth index are important factors in enabling women’s involvement in economic activities. In other words, the key findings emerged from the study are firstly, the low level of women’s economic activities in Bangladesh with a majority involved in farming, agriculture and poultry; secondly, those women involved in the labour market generally tended to come from poor backgrounds, have very little education, live in the Northwest geographical region and have a large family living in the same house; and finally, age, currently married, having a higher number of children, living in rural areas, from the Northwest region with almost no education and belonging to the poor wealth index quintile are found to be associated more with NGO activities in Bangladesh. The findings indicate there are potential barriers that are preventing Bangladeshi women from engaging in the labour market that could reinforce the case for reshaping the Government’s labour policies. The study reveals that the recent economic crisis has no significant impact on the women labour force participation as well their involvement in NGO activities in Bangladesh. It is generally understood that enhancing women’s economic participation and NGO activities has a positive impact at family, community and country levels. The study concludes that investing in women, particularly in creating employment opportunities including NGO sectors can help the country as a safeguard even during the economic crisis. It is anticipated that the findings will help policy-makers in enhancing female labour-force participation as well as encouraging them to engage in NGO activities in Bangladesh

Biological activities of aerial parts of Paeonia emodi wall

The ethanolic extract derived from the aerial parts of Paeonia emodi was screened for various in vitro biological activities including antifungal, antibacterial, insecticidal, phytotoxic and haemagglutination activities. General toxicity (brine shrimp lethality assay) of this extract has also been assessed. The extract was found to possess excellent phytotoxicity against Lemna minor L., moderate heamagglutination activity against human erythrocytes and reasonable insecticidal activity against Bruchus pisorum. The crude extract did not display any antifungal or antibacterial activity against the fungi and bacteria used in this study. No significant general toxicity was observed with the extract at tested concentrations

Development and application of a survey quality assessment model

Until recently research has been undertaken to improve the quality and effectiveness of surveys. By reviewing existing works, an improved model has been developed in this paper in order to assess the quality of statistical surveys. The model has been applied to over 103 national and international surveys and it is then used to generate synthetic data based on similar principles such as formulation, design and application quality etc. Various measures of the survey have been undertaken such as average question length, number of questions etc., and input into the database; which are analysed using statistical classification tools. This has allowed the identification of structural features of surveys which is associated with survey quality and this is reported precisely in the paper. Recommendations are made as to how a systematic approach can be taken to improve survey quality and effectiveness

Radiometric temperature analysis of the Hayabusa spacecraft re-entry

Hayabusa, an unmanned Japanese spacecraft, was launched to study and collect samples from the surface of the asteroid 25143 Itokawa. In June 2010, the Hayabusa spacecraft completed it’s seven year voyage. The spacecraft and the sample return capsule (SRC) re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the central Australian desert at speeds on the order of 12 km/s. This provided a rare opportunity to experimentally investigate the radiative heat transfer from the shock-compressed gases in front of the sample return capsule at true-flight conditions. This paper reports on the results of observations from a tracking camera situated on the ground about 100 km from where the capsule experienced peak heating during re-entry

Correlates of socioeconomic status and the health of older people in the United Kingdom: a review

This paper reviews the existing literature on the association between the socio-economic status (SES) and the health of the ageing population in the United Kingdom (UK). It has been noted that socio-economic differentials are more marked across the UK than they are in other developed countries. Social class gradients are significant in health for working age people (up to age 65), whereas studies on older populations have so far been limited so as to draw any robust conclusions. In this paper, we examine the inequalities through selected SES indicators in order to tease out the effects on health outcomes of the older population. We critically review the physical and mental health indicators of older people in the UK with regard to their SES differentials. The findings reveal that older people with lower SES are more likely to experience poorer health outcomes (for example, long-standing illness or increased disability) and have shorter life expectancy compared to those of higher SES. We illustrate how education remains the single most important determinant of health inequality in later life. We suggest that educational level or occupational class allied with material deprivation offer the best combined indicators of SES for studying health inequalities among older people. The findings of this paper has profound implications for prioritising policies to improve the health and wellbeing of elderly people with lower SES and go offer an evidence base of how to understand and to develop interventions that minimise the inequalities in health in later life in the UK

Single women living alone in later life: a short review; understanding society

This chapter picks up the study of gender issues within ageing populations. According to OECD statistics, the UK is the loneliest country in Europe and the least likely to report having close friendships or knowing our neighbours (OECD, 2005). The number of people living on their own has doubled since the 1970s, with single-person households now making up a third of all homes. We report on the findings of our examination of some of the factors associated with health and well-being of women living alone in later life using data collected in the ‘Understanding Society’ 2012. This is a nationwide longitudinal survey that captures important information on the life course trajectories of individuals in the UK. By looking at variables associated with health and wellbeing, we have identified some relevant determinants when looking at single older women living alone. The prevalence of living alone during later life varies widely across developed countries, but everywhere its growth has been remarkable in recent decades, even in societies with traditionally strong family ties (Reher and Requena, 2017). Within the increasing trend of single women living alone over time and space, there is a need to adapt and develop more accurate measures and research designs in order to begin to understand the factors impacting on the nature of ageing for those who are living alone. Forming new intimate relationships might be one way of compensating for any loneliness associated with this phenomenon (Carr, 2004)

Going solo: exploring the intimate and broader relationships of older single women without children and the implications for their support needs in later life

This poster presents findings from a scoping study into factors which impact on successful ageing for non-partnered women without children in the UK entering retirement. Little is know about the trajectory of non-partnered women without children as they grow older in modern UK society. Our interim statistical analysis using the British Household Panel Survey demonstrates growth of women living alone as they get older. We are using this study to examine how far society is able to ascertain the trends specifically in relation to 'solo' women and the potential different 'positions' occupied by this group through the examination of different variables available for measurement in the survey. Combined with a review of the literature and study, this poster considers how to go forward to explore the key research questions that will be needed for further investigation of solo women's ageing

Object Matching in Distributed Video Surveillance Systems by LDA-Based Appearance Descriptors

Establishing correspondences among object instances is still challenging in multi-camera surveillance systems, especially when the cameras’ fields of view are non-overlapping. Spatiotemporal constraints can help in solving the correspondence problem but still leave a wide margin of uncertainty. One way to reduce this uncertainty is to use appearance information about the moving objects in the site. In this paper we present the preliminary results of a new method that can capture salient appearance characteristics at each camera node in the network. A Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model is created and maintained at each node in the camera network. Each object is encoded in terms of the LDA bag-of-words model for appearance. The encoded appearance is then used to establish probable matching across cameras. Preliminary experiments are conducted on a dataset of 20 individuals and comparison against Madden’s I-MCHR is reported