Practices and Disclosures of Corporate Social Responsibility in Financial Statements: A Comparative Study on Some Commercial Banks in Bangladesh

Enthusiasm in corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures information expanded as of late. This led to companies to set a clear view for the CSR reporting to fulfill their stakeholders’ needs. The Business world is changing quickly in all over world and in addition Bangladesh. Now the objectives of business are not only confining in profit maximization as well as business is currently occupied with social duties. Social responsibilities became the important issue in this time for business. The role of business worldwide and particularly in the developed economies has evolved over the last few decades from classical “profit maximizing” approach to a social responsibility approach, where organizations are dependable to its stockholders as well as to the majority of its stakeholders in a broader inclusive sense. Now in the age of information CSR reporting plays a vital role in the developing countries. This study tries to find out the CSR reporting practices of selective commercial banks in Bangladesh. The study is based on annual report of 2013 and 2014 in various CSR sectors. It is shown that most of banks maintained limited sector of CSR in their financial reports. Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility, Reporting, Financial Information, Bank Companies, Bangladesh

Five Root Canals for a Maxillary First Molar Tooth A Case Report

This case report represents assessment and management of a maxillary left first molar tooth containing five root canals by endodontic treatment. In this case Mesiobuccal 2 (MB2), Mesiopalatal (MP) and Distobuccal (DB) canals were missed as well as very poor obturation at palatal and mesiobuccal1(MB1) canal during previous treatment history. Three mesiobuccal (MB1, MB2, and MP), DB and palatal canals were identified and endodontic retreatment was done followed by final restoration. This case provides an evidence of variations in the root canals of the mesiobuccal root of maxillary first molar tooth. Complete clinical and radiographic examination and adequate knowledge of the morphology of this kind of teeth is necessary for successful clinical outcome.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bsmmuj.v5i1.11026 BSMMU J 2012; 5(1):61-64

E-Entrepreneurship for E-Startups: Potentials, Common Challenges and Way Forward

In today’s economic world, the advancement in technology has opened up new forms of economic activities, particularly business. Whilst entrepreneurship is a major factor in business, e-entrepreneurship has become a buzzword facilitated by the rapid advancement of internet and developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). E-entrepreneurship, in the name of transforming business from the local marketplace to the global one, has revolutionized the entire business processes. This set of new business mechanism has created new opportunities for the startups, which in this regard is termed as e-startups. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the concept of eentrepreneurship by addressing related potentials and challenges. Extant literature has been reviewed to this end. The analysis indicated that flexibility of and accessibility to technology and products, less capital and risk in comparison to physical businesses are the major advantages that an e-entrepreneur might enjoy while commencing an e-startup. On the other hand, lack of institutional support, digital security threat, tough competition with established brands, less innovation and lack of academic and practical exposure in terms of business and marketing are some barriers that challenge the operation of e-startups. The conclusion of the paper draws on some recommendations accordingly. &nbsp

Early warning generation for process with unknown disturbance

Process safety has paramount importance in a chemical process. A well designed control system is the first layer in a process system. The warning system works as the upper protection layer above the control system. It alerts the operators when the control system fails to prevent an undesired situation. A typical warning system issues warnings when a monitored variable exceeds the threshold. Often these do not allow operators sufficient lead-time to take corrective actions. With the motivation of improving the operator’s working environment by providing lead-time, the current research develops a predictive warning scheme using a moving horizon technique. The main hypothesis proposed in this thesis is given the current state of process system, the future states of the system can be predicted using a suitable model of process system. If an external input disturbs the system state, the controller will try to bring the system within the desired control/safety limits of the system. A warning is issued if it is determined that the control system will not be able to keep the system withing the safety limits. Based on the hypothesis, warning systems were developed for both linear and nonlinear systems. For linear systems, using the gain of the models, a linear constrained optimization problem was formulated. Linear programming (LP) was used to determine if the system will remain within the safety limits or not. In case the LP determines that there is no feasible solution within the constrained limits, warnings are issued. The predictive warning scheme was also extended for nonlinear systems. A non-linear receding horizon predictor was used to predict the future states of the nonlinear system. However, for nonlinear system formulation leads to nonlinear constrained optimization problem, where the constraints are the safety limits. Controller’s ability to keep the predicted states inside the safety limit was checked using a feasibility test algorithm. The algorithm uses a constraint separation method with weighting functions to determine the existence of a feasible solution. The algorithm calculates the global minimum of the objective function. If the global minimum of the objective function is positive, it signifies no feasible solution within the input and output constraints of the system and a warning is issued. Prediction of the effect of the disturbances requires the knowledge of the disturbances. In process industries, disturbances are often unmeasured. This thesis also investigates the estimation of unknown disturbances. An iterative Expectation Minimization (EM) algorithm was proposed for the estimation of the unknown states and disturbances of nonlinear systems. Efficacy of the proposed methods was shown through a number of case studies. The warning system for the linear system was simulated on a virtual plant of a continuous stirred tank heater (CSTH). The nonlinear warning system was implemented on a continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR). Both case studies showed that, the proposed method was capable of providing a warning earlier than the traditional methods that issues warning based on the measured signals

Ahmed Deedat’s methodology in Comparative Theological Discourse and Zakir Naik’s integration

Ahmed Deedat has a distinctive approach and unique way of formulating his da’wah materials and their organisation. Similarly, he presented his evidence and arguments to prove his point in the debates he engaged in, the talks he delivered, and the books he authored. Hence, this paper aims to exhibit Deedat’s methodology in studying religions, focusing on his preparation for a debate, delivering it followed by a question-answer session and the extent to which Zakir Naik incorporated it. Besides that, Deedat’s short biography and contributions to the comparative theological study are explored. An analytical and comparative method is employed in this study. The most significant finding of this research is Naik’s realisation in his fifties as a dāᶜin in all situations must be versatile in his preaching and propagation

A comparative study of the outcome of displaced fractures neck of femur treated with unipolar prosthesis and fenestrated bipolar prosthesis in active elderly patients

Background: Fractures of the neck or femur are among the most serious surgical problems affecting older groups. These fractures constitute a large burden on families and society due to the inability to stand and walk. Objectives were to compare the functional outcomes of unipolar (Austin-Moore) versus uncemented bipolar hemiarthroplasty in displaced fractures neck femur among these active elderly patients.  Methods: This prospective interventional study was carried out at NITOR, Dhaka, Bangladesh in total 60 patients. Among them, 30 patients were treated with unipolar and 30 patients were treated with fenestrated bipolar prosthesis through a lateral approach. Results: There was no significant age difference between the two groups. Regarding the functional outcome, 6 (20%) patients in the unipolar group and 11 (36.67%) patients in the bipolar group had excellent outcomes. About the same number of patients had good outcomes 36.67% in the unipolar and 43.33% in the bipolar group; the fair and poor outcome was more in the unipolar group than the bipolar group. So, the final outcome after 6 months of operation, 57.57% of patients had satisfactory results in the unipolar group whereas 80% of patients had satisfactory results in the bipolar group. The average Harris hip score was 77.14±14.58 in the unipolar group and 84.63±10.15 in the bipolar group and the p=0.01 which is below 0.05. So, the result is statistically significant.  Conclusions: Uncemented bipolar hemiarthroplasty with a fenestrated stem can give better functional outcomes for displaced intracapsular femoral neck fractures in active elderly patients compared to Austin-Moore prostheses

Flood Detection Using Multi-Modal and Multi-Temporal Images: A Comparative Study

Natural disasters such as flooding can severely affect human life and property. To provide rescue through an emergency response team, we need an accurate flooding assessment of the affected area after the event. Traditionally, it requires a lot of human resources to obtain an accurate estimation of a flooded area. In this paper, we compared several traditional machine-learning approaches for flood detection including multi-layer perceptron (MLP), support vector machine (SVM), deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) with recent domain adaptation-based approaches, based on a multi-modal and multi-temporal image dataset. Specifically, we used SPOT-5 and RADAR images from the flood event that occurred in November 2000 in Gloucester, UK. Experimental results show that the domain adaptation-based approach, semi-supervised domain adaptation (SSDA) with 20 labeled data samples, achieved slightly better values of the area under the precision-recall (PR) curve (AUC) of 0.9173 and F1 score of 0.8846 than those by traditional machine approaches. However, SSDA required much less labor for ground-truth labeling and should be recommended in practice