Decent Work and Inclusive Economic Growth: Bangladesh Perspective

The study has made an effort to analyze the performance of Bangladesh economy in line with the decent work and inclusive economic growth target of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the period of 2015 to 2019 and to identify the challenges of achieving decent work for all by 2030. Bangladesh has ranked 109th among the 166 countries and moved seven notches up from 116th of 2019 in the SDGs Index 2020. Analyzing the International Labour Organization (ILO) modeled estimated data on the decent work indicators like labour force participation rate, employment to population ratio, unemployment rate, youth unemployment, informal employment, child labour and employment in agriculture, industry and service sector, the study reveals that the high youth unemployment, informality in the job market, mismatch between demand and supply of skilled labour, less female participation in the labour force, insufficient investment, participation of child and forced labour in hazardous work, etc. are the major hindrance for ensuring decent work for all. Skill development programs, large scale investment, products diversification, good governance, elimination of child and forced labour from hazardous work, etc. may help to create more employment opportunities, decent work environment as well as inclusive and sustainable economic growth in Bangladesh. Keywords: Decent Work, Inclusive Economic Growth, SDGs, Bangladesh. DOI: 10.7176/JESD/11-16-02 Publication date:August 31st 202

Removal of Chromium(III) and Other Physical Parameters from Chrome Tan Wastewater and Recovery of Chromium from the Precipitating Sludge

This study was adopted to investigate the removal of Cr(III) and other physicochemical parameters of chrome tan wastewater. For this purpose, three precipitating agents, CaCO3, NaHCO3, and MgO, were used to treat chrome tan wastewater. After treatment, it was found, in three different dose trials, that each agent removed almost 97-99.5 % of chromium. At the same time, it was observed that with the increase of doses, removal percentage of TDS, conductivity, and turbidity of effluent were reduced. In the case of NaHCO3 and CaCO3, Cr(III) removal percentage at optimum pH was found to be 99.97% and 99.95% respectively, whereas the maximum removal percentage for MgO was found to be 99.98%. The NaHCO3 and CaCO3 were found to be comparable to MgO for Cr(III) removal from chrome tan wastewater. The recovered chromium concentration in the sludge for NaHCO3 and CaCO3 were also similar to that of MgO. This research suggests that these two precipitating agents can be used in the same way as MgO, for Cr removal and recovery treatments. Moreover, this recovered chromium can be reused, thus reducing the environmental pollution

Evaluating Suitability of Glutaraldehyde Tanning in Conformity with Physical Properties of Conventional Chrome-Tanned Leather

Leather manufacturing involves a number of unit processes, out of which tanning is the most important in so far as it converts the putrescible hides/skins into non-putrescible leather. In this study, glutaraldehyde has been exploited as a means to reduce the use of basic chromium sulfate for the production of quality shoe upper crust leather. The paper consists in studying the physical properties of aldehyde-tanned leather and chrometanned leather. The aim is to find out the possibility of replacing the wet-blue leather, containing Cr(III) salts, with the glutaraldehyde-tanned wet-white leather. The physical properties of the aldehyde-tanned leather were evaluated, analyzed and compared with the conventional chrome-tanned shoe upper crust leather. Statistical analysis illustrated that the tensile strength, the percentage of elongation, stitch tear strength, Baumann tear strength and grain crack strength of the leather was 211±1 kg/cm2, 38±0.5 %, 89±0.11 kg/cm, 63±0.4 kg/cm and 23±0.4 kg respectively. It was observed that the property of the experimental leather was quite comparable with the conventional chrome-tanned leather and able to meet the requirements of the shoe upper crust leather after re-tanning. The shrinkage temperature of the experimental tanned leather was found to be 87 °C, lower than that of corresponding control, which indicates lesser tanning power of aldehyde. However, the morphology of the aldehyde-tanned leather was quite akin with the conventional leather. This study suggests that using glutaraldehyde in the tanning process in order to minimize the chromium load in the tanning and the re-tanning process during the production of shoe upper crust leather reduces the generation of toxic waste and its impact on the environment

Hand Sign to Bangla Speech: A Deep Learning in Vision based system for Recognizing Hand Sign Digits and Generating Bangla Speech

Recent advancements in the field of computer vision with the help of deep neural networks have led us to explore and develop many existing challenges that were once unattended due to the lack of necessary technologies. Hand Sign/Gesture Recognition is one of the significant areas where the deep neural network is making a substantial impact. In the last few years, a large number of researches has been conducted to recognize hand signs and hand gestures, which we aim to extend to our mother-tongue, Bangla (also known as Bengali). The primary goal of our work is to make an automated tool to aid the people who are unable to speak. We developed a system that automatically detects hand sign based digits and speaks out the result in Bangla language. According to the report of the World Health Organization (WHO), 15% of people in the world live with some kind of disabilities. Among them, individuals with communication impairment such as speech disabilities experience substantial barrier in social interaction. The proposed system can be invaluable to mitigate such a barrier. The core of the system is built with a deep learning model which is based on convolutional neural networks (CNN). The model classifies hand sign based digits with 92% accuracy over validation data which ensures it a highly trustworthy system. Upon classification of the digits, the resulting output is fed to the text to speech engine and the translator unit eventually which generates audio output in Bangla language. A web application to demonstrate our tool is available at http://bit.ly/signdigits2banglaspeech

Heavy metals toxicity of surface soils near industrial vicinity: A study on soil contamination in Bangladesh

Tangail district is more vulnerable to heavy metals contamination for industrialization in Bangladesh. Present study describe six heavy metals (Cr, Ni, Cu, As, Cd, and Pb) in fifteen several sampling locations in industrial vicinity of Tangail district were determined. The concentration of Cr, Ni, Cu, As, Cd, and Pb in studied areas soils were observed 0.96–14.04, 0.71– 18.39, 1.02–34.44, 1.2–11.21, 0.44–3.31 and 2.01–28.86 mg/kg, respectively. There is representing a potential risk to the environment for presenting of these heavy metals in soils. This metals are generally toxic to soil and environment. They can persist in the environment for many years and have adverse effect to ecology. Certain indices like contamination factor (CF), enrichment factor (EF), geoaccumulation index (Igeo), pollution load index (PLI), source analysis, principle component analysis (PCA), and toxic units were calculated to determine environmental hazard caused by heavy metals in studied soils. Enrichment factors for the studied metals were in the descending order of Cd > As > Pb > Cu >Ni > Cr. The PLI values for studied metals, causes the Cd contamination in soil of Tangail district. Potential ecological risk (PER) showed low to very high risk to studied vicinity

Lupus Vulgaris Causing Nasal Destruction: Rare Presentation in Current Time

A 42-year-old lady reported with slowly progressive reddish lesions over the nose, followed by atrophy and ulceration for about 6 years. Clinical examination revealed atrophied, ulcerated, erythematous lesions over central face, forehead and neck destroying whole nose. Mantoux test resulted 16×18 mm on 48 hours observation. Histopathological examination of the lesion showed noncaseating grunuloma along with Langhans giant cells in the upper dermis surrounded by lymphocytes. The conclusive diagnosis was lupus vulgaris based on above findings. Six months therapy with INH 300 mg plus rifampicin 600 mg supplemented by initial 2 months ethambutol 1000 mg plus pyrazinamide 1500 mg daily resulted clean-looking perforation with healthy margi

WBAN-IoMT integration for a new frontier in healthcare technology

This paper presents a cutting-edge approach for remotely collecting and transmitting crucial medical data for a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) technology integrated with the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). At first, a prototype system was devised, which employs a Mosquitto server for seamless data transfer, a Node-red for debugging, and a Gadgetbridge for real-time data acquisition from a Mi Band 5 and stored in a database website called MediData. MediData encompasses medical history and vital parameters such as glucose rate and ECG report. This system allows the data to route the data to hospital servers for prompt analysis and action. The proposed WBAN technology eliminates the need for physical records and offers convenience and comfort for patients. Additionally, the integration of Smart ambulances further enhances the precision and velocity of data transmission to medical personnel. After going through several cross-validation models, finally obtained the best accuracy of 86% using the K-Nearest Neighbors method, while Random Forest shows comparatively better generalization with a lower cross-validation error of 24.75%. Findings from this work demonstrate the tremendous potential of WBAN technology, revolutionizing the way medical data is collected and analyzed in conjunction with IoMT for efficient and accurate medical data management. © 2024 IEEE

Identification and Economic Potentiality of Mineral Sands Resources of Hatiya Island, Bangladesh

Hatiya is the second largest island of Bangladesh and is situated near the Meghna River estuary in the central coastal zone of Bangladesh. This island hosts a few scenic beaches with a huge deposit of mineral sands. Representative mineral sand samples from various beaches of this island were collected during the year 2019, and analyzed for different mineralogical contents using state-of-the-art techniques, such as WD-XRF, XRD, SEM and EDX. This study determined various mineralogical contents, such as SiO2 (73.58%), micas (40.30%), Al2O3 (12.13%), TiO2 (0.56%), MgO (1.31%), Fe2O3 (4.71%), K2O (3.1%), Na2O (1.92%), CaO (3.16%), some earth metals, and heavy minerals, such as ilmenite (14.77%), garnet (11.02%), rutile (14.94%), magnetite (15.26%), and zircon (13.63%), were identified in the analyzed samples. It is suggested that the studied sand can be utilized as a raw material in the glass industry, due to its high SiO2 content. The approximate prices of heavy and light minerals, such as garnet (USD 75–USD 210/mt), ilmenite (USD 110/mt), magnetite (USD 84/mt), rutile (USD 840/mt), zircon (USD 1050/mt) and micas (USD 109/mt), some oxides such as K2O (USD 350–400/mt), CaO (USD 350–450/mt), Al2O3 (USD 1000-USD 1300/mt), TiO2 (USD 4000–4500/mt), and Fe2O3 (USD 650–1500/mt), and some other heavy metals (Rb, Th, Ba, V, Cr, Cs, Ni and Co), indicates a great economic value of the sand of the Hatiya Island beaches. This study recommends that Hatiya Island’s minerals should be mined responsibly and used effectively, to enhance the nation’s economy