Corporate Mandatory and Voluntary Disclosure Practices in Bangladesh: Evidence from listed companies of Dhaka Stock Exchange

This paper investigates the extent and level of mandatory and voluntary disclosure practice of companies in Bangladesh. The paper has been conducted on the sample of 54 listed companies in Bangladesh for a data period of 2010 to 2013. This paper also reports the results of the association between company specific characteristics and mandatory as well as voluntary disclosure of the sample companies. Findings indicate on an average 71% of the companies analyzed disclose above-average number of additional information. The explanatory analyses has shown that firm size in terms of total asset and status of the company significantly and positively affect the level and extent of voluntary disclosure in the annual report of Bangladeshi companies. In case of mandatory disclosure level results point out that companies in general have not reacted adequately to the mandatory disclosure requirements of the regulatory bodies. The study reveals that disclosure compliance is poor among listed companies. They disclosed an average of 50.62% of the items selected during the study period of 2010 to 2013. The minimum score found in the study is 20.89% and the maximum is 77.08%. Using panel data regression analysis this study has found that company age and the status of the company (industry type) have appeared to be significant factors for mandatory disclosure. On the other hand company size in terms of total asset and sales, and company profitability was also found to have no effect on mandatory disclosure. Keywords: Mandatory disclosure, Voluntary disclosure, Disclosure index, Bangladeshi companies, Corporate Governance

Effect of Various Groins in a Series on Channel Bed Morphology: an Experimental Investigation

Alluvial rivers in Bangladesh are unstable keep changing their main channel, banklines, and so on. Groins are extensively used worldwide for shore protection from erosion, river navigation, beach reclamation among many other services. Improving the performance of groins is a crucial issue around the glove. Experimental investigations under clear water scour conditions have been conducted in this research to compare the performance of different groins in order to find out the suitable design of a groin. From the experimental runs, it is revealed that the groin models of different configurations behave in different ways. In the case of a solid I-shaped groin, a huge scour near the groin head and irregular bed pattern develop in the channel bed. While L-head and hockey-shaped groins improve the channel response a bit leading to decreased scour. Moreover, the hockey-shaped groin attracts the flow, and thus requires groin installation closely. The scour hole for a combined groin is relatively very small. As the scour endangers the stability of the groin structure, this turns out to be the most suitable one

Empathy Detection Using Machine Learning on Text, Audiovisual, Audio or Physiological Signals

Empathy is a social skill that indicates an individual's ability to understand others. Over the past few years, empathy has drawn attention from various disciplines, including but not limited to Affective Computing, Cognitive Science and Psychology. Empathy is a context-dependent term; thus, detecting or recognising empathy has potential applications in society, healthcare and education. Despite being a broad and overlapping topic, the avenue of empathy detection studies leveraging Machine Learning remains underexplored from a holistic literature perspective. To this end, we systematically collect and screen 801 papers from 10 well-known databases and analyse the selected 54 papers. We group the papers based on input modalities of empathy detection systems, i.e., text, audiovisual, audio and physiological signals. We examine modality-specific pre-processing and network architecture design protocols, popular dataset descriptions and availability details, and evaluation protocols. We further discuss the potential applications, deployment challenges and research gaps in the Affective Computing-based empathy domain, which can facilitate new avenues of exploration. We believe that our work is a stepping stone to developing a privacy-preserving and unbiased empathic system inclusive of culture, diversity and multilingualism that can be deployed in practice to enhance the overall well-being of human life

Origin and Accumulation Mechanism of Gas Condensate in Kailashtila Gas Field, Sylhet Basin, Bangladesh

The Kailashtila gas field (KGF) is situated in the northeastern part of Sylhet basin, Bangladesh. This paperpresents chemical characteristics of extractable natural gas in drilled well KTL-2, in order to examine their potentialsource and maturity of organic matter, and hydrocarbon accumulation mechanism in the basin. The gas condensate inthe KTL-2 composed primarily of methane (85.81 wt.%), ethane (6.68 wt.%), propane (2.13 wt.%), and traces of higherhydrocarbons (i-butane, 0.69 wt.%; n-butane, 0.73 wt.%; i-pentane, 0.50 wt.%; n-pentane, 0.44 wt.%; hexane, 1.27wt.%; heptane, 0.99 wt.%; octane, 0.24 wt.%). Nitrogen and CO2 contents in the gas condensate are low (0.46 wt.%and 0.05 wt.%, respectively). Average dry coefficient (C1/C1–5) value in the gas condensate is 0.93 (0.91–0.95), whichreflects relatively mature hydrocarbon migrating from nearby deeply buried source rocks. The δ13C1 (–39 to –40‰) andC1/C(2+3) (19.77) variation diagram show that gas condensate in the KGF is mainly controlled by type III kerogen, andthe organic matter was thermally mature in nature. However, the relationships between stable isotope value of methane(δ13C1), ethane (δ13C2) and propane (δ13C3) indicate mainly thermogenic origin of the studied gas condensate, andminor input from mixed thermogenic and bacteriogenic processes

Comparative outcome of cisplatin-capecitabine regimen with oxaliplatincapecitabine regimen in advanced gastric carcinoma: a quasi-experimental study

Chemotherapy is the primary therapeutic choice for advanced gastric cancer. The goal of this study was to assess the effectiveness and toxicity of the cisplatin-capecitabine regimen versus the oxaliplatin-capecitabine regimen in treating advanced gastric cancer. Between February 2021 and March 2022, this quasi-experimental study was conducted on 64 advanced gastric cancer patients. Purposive sampling was used to include those who met the inclusion criteria and distributed them evenly between the two arms. Arm A got an injection of cisplatin (80 mg/m2 on day 1) with oral capecitabine (1000 mg/m2 b.i.d. on days 1–14), whereas arm B received an injection of oxaliplatin (130 mg/m2 on day 1) plus oral capecitabine (1000 mg/m2 b.i.d. on days 1–14), every 3 weeks for 6 cycles. A final check-up was done at 12 weeks after the treatment. In arm A, 18 (56.2%) patients exhibited partial response compared to 15 (46.9%) in arm B. Stable diseases were also reported in both arms (18.8% in arm A and 21.9% in arm B). There were 8 (25.0%) cases of progressive disease in arm A and 10 (31.2%) cases in Arm B. The median progression-free survival in arms A (5.6 months) was almost similar to arm B (5.9 months). The most prevalent toxicities in both arms were vomiting, diarrhea, anemia, neutropenia, oral mucositis, paresthesia, handfoot syndrome, and renal toxicity. There were no statistically significant variations in outcomes between the two arms. In conclusion, the cisplatincapecitabine regimen is as effective as the oxaliplatin-capecitabine regimen in advanced gastric cancer. BSMMU J 2022; 15(3): 180-18

A Planar Antenna On Flexible Substrate For Future 5G Energy Harvesting In Malaysia

This article presents a planar monopole antenna on flexible substrate for middle band 5G (3.5 GHz) application in Malaysia. The antenna has been designed and optimized for its gain and efficiency with an improved performance in contrast of flexible substrate-based other antennas. The antenna resonates at 3.53 GHz and it has a -10dB bandwidth of 545 MHz. The bending effects of this antenna on the S-parameter and gain have also been investigated. The antenna is able to suppress all the other frequency bands until 20 GHz. The designed antenna has been utilized with a newly designed rectifier to act as an rectenna at 3.5 GHz for RF energy harvesting applications. A reasonable amount of DC output voltage of 930 mV, and a Power Conversion Efficiency of 43.5% have been obtained while 0 dBm RF input power is delivered to the rectifier input terminal. Apart from the utilization as an energy harvester being connected with the proposed rectifier, the designed antenna on flexible substrate can also be employed to biomedical and sensor applications

A tree-profile shape ultra wide band antenna for chipless RFID tags

In this article, a new small size planar microstrip tree profile shaped Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) antenna with partial ground plane has been presented. The antenna is designed for chipless RFID tags that are working in UWB region. The operating frequency of the antenna is between 2.72 GHz to 11.1 GHz which covers the entire UWB frequency band. The antenna exhibits comparatively high realized gain of 4.2 dBi with respect to its small size of 27 × 40 mm2 and have a gain to aperture ratio of 0.243 which is comparatively higher than other existing retransmission-based chipless RFID antennas. Another aspect of this antenna is its total efficiency which never goes below 80% throughout the entire bandwidth whereby it reaches as high as 96% at 3.5GHz. This design will motivate the chipless RFID designers to produce small size and cost effective tags

A notched UWB microstrip patch antenna for 5G lower and FSS bands

In ASEAN countries, the fifth generation (5G) forum proposed a 5G application lower frequency band (4.5–5.5) GHz and the fixed satellite service (FSS) C-band at (3.3–4.2) GHz. Previous research works have demonstrated that the complexity of antenna design, large size and in most of the cases, active elements that were added to antenna has made the antenna costly. Therefore, this research work focused on developing a single band notched (SBN) and double band notched (DBN) antennas by creating notched bands for 5G lower band from 4.5 to 5.5 GHz and C-band 3.3 to 4.2 GHz applications in antenna UWB spectrum. An UWB antenna has been developed using low-cost FR-4 substrate with partial grounding (PG) on a rectangular patch. A single band and dual band notched UWB antennas were realized for the 5G lower band through the use of a slot at the top of the radiating patch and by adding an arc shape open loop (ASOL) on the UWB antenna. Both antennas are fabricated using the same FR-4 substrate and tested using Vector Network Analyzer (VNA). The voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR), return loss, gain, and 2-D radiation pattern of the test results prove that all antennas have excellent performance (compared to previous research works) in notched band and UWB band frequencies. Therefore, developed single notch and dual notch UWB antennas are proposed as good candidates for 5G lower band and C-band notched application environment

Perceptions about Telemedicine among Populations with Chronic Diseases amid COVID-19: Data from a Cross-Sectional Survey

Chronic diseases, including non-communicable diseases (NCDs), have arisen as a severe threat to health and socio-economic growth. Telemedicine can provide both the highest level of patient satisfaction and the lowest risk of infection during a pandemic. The factors associated with its usage and patient adherence are not visible in Bangladesh's resource-constrained settings. Therefore, this study aimed to identify perceptions about telemedicine among populations with chronic diseases amid the COVID-19 pandemic. A closed-ended self-reported questionnaire was created, and the questionnaire was written, reviewed, and finalized by a public health investigator, a psychiatrist, and an epidemiologist. The data for this study were collected from individuals using simple random sampling and snowball sampling techniques. Ethics approval was granted, and written/verbal consent was taken before interviews. Most of the participants showed a positive attitude towards telemedicine. People aged 35-54 years old and a higher level of education were less frequently associated with willingness to receive telemedicine services for current chronic disease (WRTCCD) than their counterparts. People living in urban areas and lower-income participants were more strongly associated with WRTCCD. Additionally, people who did not lose their earnings due to the pandemic were less strongly associated with WRTCCD. However, the main strength of this research is that it is a broad exploration of patient interest in several general forms of telehealth. In Bangladesh, there are many opportunities for telemedicine to be integrated into the existing healthcare system, if appropriate training and education are provided for healthcare professionals

Pooled analysis of WHO Surgical Safety Checklist use and mortality after emergency laparotomy

Background The World Health Organization (WHO) Surgical Safety Checklist has fostered safe practice for 10 years, yet its place in emergency surgery has not been assessed on a global scale. The aim of this study was to evaluate reported checklist use in emergency settings and examine the relationship with perioperative mortality in patients who had emergency laparotomy. Methods In two multinational cohort studies, adults undergoing emergency laparotomy were compared with those having elective gastrointestinal surgery. Relationships between reported checklist use and mortality were determined using multivariable logistic regression and bootstrapped simulation. Results Of 12 296 patients included from 76 countries, 4843 underwent emergency laparotomy. After adjusting for patient and disease factors, checklist use before emergency laparotomy was more common in countries with a high Human Development Index (HDI) (2455 of 2741, 89.6 per cent) compared with that in countries with a middle (753 of 1242, 60.6 per cent; odds ratio (OR) 0.17, 95 per cent c.i. 0.14 to 0.21, P <0001) or low (363 of 860, 422 per cent; OR 008, 007 to 010, P <0.001) HDI. Checklist use was less common in elective surgery than for emergency laparotomy in high-HDI countries (risk difference -94 (95 per cent c.i. -11.9 to -6.9) per cent; P <0001), but the relationship was reversed in low-HDI countries (+121 (+7.0 to +173) per cent; P <0001). In multivariable models, checklist use was associated with a lower 30-day perioperative mortality (OR 0.60, 0.50 to 073; P <0.001). The greatest absolute benefit was seen for emergency surgery in low- and middle-HDI countries. Conclusion Checklist use in emergency laparotomy was associated with a significantly lower perioperative mortality rate. Checklist use in low-HDI countries was half that in high-HDI countries.Peer reviewe