Identifying Potential Factors of Childbearing in Bangladesh

This paper aims to identify different potential factors associated with childbearing pattern among the ever-married women in Bangladesh. Childbearing pattern is directly related to fertility level and rapid population growth is the major consequence of more childbearing. Bearing more children affects adversely on social and economic opportunities and produces substantial risks to the health of mothers and children. Bangladesh Demographic Health Survey data 1999-2000 and 2004 have been used for this study. First bi-variate analysis method is carried out to identify different factors associated with childbearing. Then generalized linear modelling approach has been performed to quantify the simultaneous effect of key socio-economic and demographic factors. Our primary findings show that childbearing varied tremendously by education level and age at first marriage. From the generalized linear model analysis, mother's age group, types of place of residence, division, media exposure are found to be significantly associated with bearing more children among the ever-married women in Bangladesh. These findings suggest that government should continue its effort to ensure higher education for females and to promote to delay age at marriage

Literate Life Expectancy in Bangladesh: A New Approach of Social Indicator

Social indicators have been used informally for a very long time, particularly in economics, to assess the state of the nation and progress towards national objectives. Measuring people’s quality of life emphasizes human well being and particularly issues of equity, poverty, and gender. In this context, this paper uses a latest indicator of social development, Literate Life Expectancy (LLE), which was introduced by Lutz (1995). We have tried to highlight the importance of using a pure social indicator which is largely a demographically-based indicator and that intentionally does not use any economic measurement but rather combines in one number both life expectancy and literacy. In other words, Literate Life Expectancy is the aggregate average number of years that a person lives in a literate state. The Literate Life Expectancy index proved to be a very clear and simple comprehensive measure of social development at urban or rural level of spatial aggregation. Importantly, this index could be used to calculate future social development by adopting different mortality and educational scenarios, which can be associated with specific policy assumptions. To demonstrate Literate Life Expectancy’s usefulness, we assessed the levels of social development in Bangladesh at the residence levels. The obtained results at the national level shows the remarkable difference in the Literate Life Expectancy between urban and rural people (men and women). With the literacy and life expectancy information, sex differentials are seen and compared throughout each age group for both rural and urban areas, which clearly proves the existing gender difference either in rural or in urban area of Bangladesh

Wavelet Based Performance Analysis of Image Compression

In this paper, our aim is to compare for the different wavelet-based image compression techniques. The effects of different wavelet functions filter orders, number of decompositions, image contents and compression ratios were examined. The results of the above techniques WDR, ASWDR, STW, SPIHT, EZW etc., were compared by using the parameters such as PSNR, MSE BPP values from the reconstructed image. These techniques are successfully tested by four different images

Cordyceps Mushroom: a Potent Anticancer Nutraceutical

The Cordyceps mushrooms have a long history as medicinal fungi. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, Cordyceps have been used to treat several conditions including cancers for thousand of years. Extracts from both mycelium and fruiting bodies of C. sinensis, C. militaris and other Cordyceps species showed significant anticancer activities by various mechanisms such as, modulating immune system and inducing cell apoptosis. Some polysaccharide components and cordycepin (3\u27 -deoxyadenosine) have been isolated from C. sinensis and C. militaris, which acted as potent anticancer components. This review article aims to further elucidate the importance of Cordyceps mushrooms by summarizing the findings of some of the important research works concerning possible mechanism of anticancer activity of this mushroom

Establishment of stable cell line for inducing KAP1 protein expression

Generation of the stable cell lines is a highly efficient tool in functional studies of certain genes or proteins, where the particular genes or proteins are inducibly expressed. The KRAB-associated protein-1 (KAP1) is an important transcription regulatory protein, which is investigated in several molecular biological studies. In this study, we have aimed to generate a stable cell line for inducing KAP1 expression. The recombinant plasmid pcDNA5/FRT/TO-KAP1 was constructed at first, which was then transfected into Flp-In™T-REx™-HEK293 cells to establish an inducible pcDNA5/FRT/TO-KAP1-HEK293 cell line. The Western blot analysis showed that the protein level of KAP1 is over-expressed in the established stable cell line by doxycycline induction, both dose and time dependently. Thus we have successfully established stable pcDNA5/FRT/TO-KAP1-HEK293 cell line, which can express KAP1 inducibly. This inducible cell line might be very useful for KAP1 functional studies

ISG15 inhibits IFN- a -Resistant liver cancer cell growth

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most prevalent tumors worldwide. Interferon-a (IFN-a) has been widely used in the treatment of HCC, but patients eventually develop resistance. ISG15 ubiquitin-like modifier (ISG15) is a ubiquitin-like protein transcriptionally regulated by IFN-a which shows antivirus and antitumor activities. However, the exact role of ISG15 is unknown. In the present study, we showed that IFN-a significantly induced ISG15 expression but failed to induce HepG2 cell apoptosis, whereas transient overexpression of ISG15 dramatically increased HepG2 cell apoptosis. ISG15 overexpression increased overall protein ubiquitination, which was not observed in cells with IFN-a-induced ISG15 expression, suggesting that IFN-a treatment not only induced the expression of ISG15 but also inhibited ISG15-mediated ubiquitination. The tumor suppressor p53 and p21 proteins are the key regulators of cell survival and death in response to stress signals such as DNA damage. We showed that p53 or p21 is only up regulated in HepG2 cells ectopically expressing ISG15, but not in the presence of IFN-a-induced ISG15. Our results suggest that ISG15 overexpression could be developed into a powerful gene-therapeutic tool for treating IFN-a-resistant HCC. © 2013 Xin-xing Wan et al

Development and significance of RAPD-SCAR markers for the identification of Litchi chinensis Sonn. by improved RAPD amplification and molecular cloning

Background: Analysis of genetic diversity is important for the authentication of a species. Litchi ( Litchi chinensis Sonn.) is a subtropical evergreen tree. Recently, L. chinensis has been characterized by an improved random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) analysis. The goal of this study was to develop sequence-characterized amplified region (SCAR) markers from the improved RAPD fragments for the genetic analysis of L. chinensis. Results: The improved RAPD fragments from L. chinensis were cloned, sequenced and converted into stable SCAR markers. Sequencing of three cloned RAPD fragments revealed that the clone L7-16 consisted of 222 nucleotides (GenBank accession number KM235222), clone L9-6 consisted of 648 nucleotides (GenBank accession number KM235223), and clone L11-26 consisted of 369 nucleotides (GenBank accession number KM235224). Then, specific primers for SCAR markers L7-16, L9-6, and L11-26 were designed and synthesized. PCR amplification was performed using DNA templates from 24 different samples, including 6 samples of L. chinensis and other plants. The SCAR marker L9-6 was specific for all of the L. chinensis samples, the SCAR marker L11-26 specific for five L. chinensis samples, and the SCAR marker L7-16 only specific for the samples from Luzhou. Conclusions: This study developed stable SCAR markers for the identification of L. chinensis by the cloning of the improved RAPD fragments. Combining RAPD and SCAR markers provides a simple and reliable tool for the genetic characterization of plant species

An Action Plan for Adaptation in Bangladesh Agriculture under Climate Change

This report is the outcome of a study titled 'An Action Plan for Adaptation in Bangladesh Agriculture under Climate Change', carried out with support from the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). This report prepared by the Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) delineates an action plan to prioritize adaptation options after considering the inputs by experts and scrutiny by stakeholders. It aims to promote precision agriculture and commercialization of crop agriculture with strong institutional and financial footing to tackle climate change