BSpell: A CNN-Blended BERT Based Bangla Spell Checker

Bangla typing is mostly performed using English keyboard and can be highly erroneous due to the presence of compound and similarly pronounced letters. Spelling correction of a misspelled word requires understanding of word typing pattern as well as the context of the word usage. A specialized BERT model named BSpell has been proposed in this paper targeted towards word for word correction in sentence level. BSpell contains an end-to-end trainable CNN sub-model named SemanticNet along with specialized auxiliary loss. This allows BSpell to specialize in highly inflected Bangla vocabulary in the presence of spelling errors. Furthermore, a hybrid pretraining scheme has been proposed for BSpell that combines word level and character level masking. Comparison on two Bangla and one Hindi spelling correction dataset shows the superiority of our proposed approach. BSpell is available as a Bangla spell checking tool via GitHub: https://github.com/Hasiburshanto/Bangla-Spell-Checke

An Evaluation of the Factors Influencing Customers’ Experience in Supermarkets of Bangladesh

The supermarket industry of Bangladesh came off the ground in the early 2000s. The industry has witnessed steady growth over this time-frame. Mostly run by three key players Shwapno, Agora and Meena Bazar, the industry has brought to a certain extent a major shift of consumer shopping preferences from mom-and-pop stores to the superstores. The rise of the middle class and its growing buying power drive the growth of Bangladesh's supermarket business. The sector is likely to witness further growth due to rapid urbanization and higher per capita income, according to market players. The market size of the country's supermarket is approximately Tk. 2,500 crore, and the growth has been nearly 15 percent per year over the past couple of years. Faced with many obstacles such as the imposition of VAT, scarcity of proper commercial space and a yet-to-be-robust value chain, the industry is making progress towards growth. The top players jumped on the bandwagon to create a superior "Supermarket Experience" for their valued customers. This study aims at investigating the factors that affect customers’ experience in supermarkets of Bangladesh. Secondary data were used to review the literature and primary data were used to conduct the analysis. A sample of 206 customers who regularly visit supermarkets were interviewed using a structured questionnaire. Both descriptive and inferential analysis were used to analyze the data. Multivariate analysis such as- Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the factors that significantly influence customers’ experience in supermarkets. Multiple regression analysis was performed to identify the relationship between the factors and the overall customers’ experience in supermarkets of Bangladesh. The result shows that factors such as, time saving, staff assistance and responsiveness, product authenticity with clear labeling, return policy, flexible mode of payment, convenient location and competitive pricing are the important factors that influence customers’ experience in supermarkets of Bangladesh. This study suggests that the super chain owners should focus more on saving customers’ time, staff assistance and responsiveness, ensuring authenticity of goods by clearly labeling, liberal return policy, flexible mode of payment such as- card and digital payment, convenient store location and competitive pricing of goods compared to the local wet markets to improve the customers’ experience in supermarkets of Bangladesh. Keywords: Customers’ experience, Time saving, Staff assistance, Product authenticity, Flexible mode of payment, Competitive pricing. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/11-26-02 Publication date:September 30th 201

Home environment factors associated with early childhood development in rural areas of Bangladesh: evidence from a national survey

BackgroundKnowing the relationship between the factors related to home environment and early childhood development (ECD) in Bangladeshi children aged 3 to 4  years would help to find out appropriate interventions for the children with lower ECD outcomes. Therefore, we aimed to understand the relationship between the home environment factors and ECD in rural Bangladeshi children aged 3 to 4  years.MethodsWe used data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2019, and included 7,326 rural children aged 3 to 4  years. The ECD index (ECDI) included four domains: literacy-numeracy, learning, physical and socio-emotional development. If a child met at least three of these four domains, the child was indicated as developmentally “on track”.ResultsThe findings show that 27.4% of rural children missed to reach developmentally on-track while 72.2% of children did not attain the literacy-numeracy domain of ECD. The home environment factors including parental participation in children’s activities, was found to be associated with ECD. For instance, reading books to child had 26% (aOR = 1.26, 95% CI = 1.08–1.48), and telling stories to child had 29% (aOR = 1.29, 95% CI = 1.09–1.53) more developmentally on-track in overall ECDI. Similar associations between home environment factors and specific ECD domains were also obtained. We also identified that children aged 4  years, girls, and children of mothers with higher socio-economic status (SES) were higher developmentally on-track than their counterparts.ConclusionHome environment factors like reading books and telling stories to children were found to be significantly associated with ECD in rural areas of Bangladesh. Our study’s findings would assist in implementing the essential public health intervention to enhance the ECD program especially in the rural Bangladeshi context

Osjetljiva spektrofotometrijska metoda za određivanje antagonista H2-receptora uz uporabu N-bromsukcinimida i p-aminofenola

A simple, accurate and sensitive spectrophotometric method for determination of H2-receptor antagonists: cimetidine (CIM), famotidine (FAM), nizatidine (NIZ), and ranitidine hydrochloride (RAN) has been full developed and validated The method was based on the reaction of these drugs with NBS and subsequent measurement of the excess N-bromosuccinimide by its reaction with p-aminophenol to give a violet colored product (max at 552 nm). Decrease in the absorption intensity (A) of the colored product, due to the presence of the drug, was correlated with its concentration in the sample solution. Different variables affecting the reaction were carefully studied and optimized. Under optimal conditions, linear relationships with good correlation coefficients (0.9988-0.9998) were found between A values and the corresponding concentrations of the drugs in a concentration range of 830, 622, 625, and 420 g mL1 for CIM, FAM, NIZ, and RAN, respectively. Limits of detection were 1.22, 1.01, 1.08, and 0.74 g mL1 for CIM, FAM, NIZ, and RAN, respectively. The method was validated in terms of accuracy, precision, ruggedness, and robustness; the results were satisfactory. The proposed method was successfully applied to the analysis of the above mentioned drugs in bulk substance and in pharmaceutical dosage forms; percent recoveries ranged from 98.5 0.9 to 102.4 0.8% without interference from the common excipients. The results obtained by the proposed method were comparable with those obtained by the official methods.Razvijena je i validirana ispravna, jednostavna i osjetljiva spektrofotometrijska metoda za određivanje antagonista H2-receptora: cimetidina (CIM), famotidina (FAM), nizatidina (NIZ) i ranitidin hidroklorida (RAN). Metoda se temelji na reakciji tih ljekovitih tvari s N-bromsukcinimidom (NBS). Višak N-bromsukcinimida određuje se nakon reakcije s p-aminofenolom s kojim daje ljubičasti produkt (max pri 552 nm). Smanjenje apsorpcijskog intenziteta (A) obojenog produkta, zbog prisutnosti ljekovite tvari korelirano je s njegovom koncentracijom u otopini uzorka. Proučavane su različite varijable koje utječu na reakciju. Linearno koncentracijsko područje za CIM, FAM, NIZ i RAN, s koeficijentom korelacije od 0,9988 do 0,9998, iznosi 830, 622, 625 odnosno 420 g mL1. Granice detekcije bile su 1,23, 1,02, 1,09 i 0,75 g mL1 za CIM, FAM, NIZ, odnosno RAN. Predložena metoda je uspješno primijenjena za analizu navedenih ljekovitih tvari i ljekovitih pripravaka. Nepreciznost od 0,7 do 1,2% i visoka ispravnost (analitički povrat između 98,5 i 102,4%), bez interferencije uobičajenih pomoćnih tvari, ukazuju na dobru analitičku metodu. Rezultati dobiveni predloženom metodom usporedivi su s rezultatima dobivenim službenom metodom

Black Muslim Freedom Dreams: Islamic Education, Transnational Migration, And Mobility

This study examines the imaginative possibilities and potential of classical Islamic education in Senegal for African American Muslims from the U.S. Focusing on a multi-generational community whose daughters and sons study in Medina Baye, Senegal, this study asks: (1) How do youth and families articulate the value, relevance, and purpose of religious educational migration? (2) What types of formal and informal learning take place in the immersive Black, Muslim, Sufi environment of Medina Baye? (3) How do classical Islamic education and transnational migration shape young people’s religious and racial subject formation and imagined life trajectories? Based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Medina Baye, as well as additional fieldwork in New York City, Atlanta, Detroit, and Washington D.C., this study employs participant-observation, classroom observations, and interviews and focus groups with youth, parents, teachers, administrators, alumni, and community members. This research shows that Islamic education abroad has an impact on these African American Muslim youths’ notions of leadership and communal responsibility, inculcating within them a commitment to improve the material, moral, and educational conditions of Black and Muslim communities in the urban U.S. This research therefore shows how Islamic education becomes actualized through spiritual and social practices that are linked to the political economic, historical, racial, and religious dynamics of the places that transnational Muslim students travel between. This study also demonstrates how educational migration facilitates long-term diasporic exchange with contemporary African societies. In so doing, it elucidates how Islam remakes political and cultural links across the Black Atlantic and argues that membership in a transnational Muslim community gives rise to new forms of economic and social reciprocity between African and African American Muslims

Coffee and Coronary Heart Disease, is there a relationship?

Context: Coffee has been shown to increase the risk factors associated with coronary heart disease (CHD), including serum cholesterol, insulin resistance, blood pressure, and plasma homocysteine; however studies examining the association between coffee consumption and CHD have been inconclusive. Objective: To determine if there is a relationship between coffee consumption and development of CHD among adults. Methods: A literature review of studies published between the years 2000 to 2015, using PubMed and Medline, with the titles containing the keywords “Coffee” AND “Coronary Heart Disease”, “Coffee” AND “Artery”, or “Coffee” AND “Coronary” was conducted. Review articles, editorials, and studies conducted on clinical subpopulations were excluded; the ten articles which remained were examined. Results: While the majority of case-control studies demonstrate a positive association between coffee consumption and CHD, most cohort studies have reported no such association. Conclusions: Inconclusive results may be explained by the acute detrimental effects of coffee on coronary events, rather than a long-term adverse effect of coffee consumption

Deep learning based object detection and surrounding environment description for visually impaired people

Object detection, one of the most significant contributions of computer vision and machine learning, plays an immense role in identifying and locating objects in an image or a video. We recognize distinct objects and precisely get their information through object detection, such as their size, shape, and location. This paper developed a low-cost assistive system of obstacle detection and the surrounding environment depiction to help blind people using deep learning techniques. TensorFlow object detection API and SSDLite MobileNetV2 have been used to create the proposed object detection model. The pre-trained SSDLite MobileNetV2 model is trained on the COCO dataset, with almost 328,000 images of 90 different objects. The gradient particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique has been used in this work to optimize the final layers and their corresponding hyperparameters of the MobileNetV2 model. Next, we used the Google text-to-speech module, PyAudio, playsound, and speech recognition to generate the audio feedback of the detected objects. A Raspberry Pi camera captures real-time video where real-time object detection is done frame by frame with Raspberry Pi 4B microcontroller. The proposed device is integrated into a head cap, which will help visually impaired people to detect obstacles in their path, as it is more efficient than a traditional white cane. Apart from this detection model, we trained a secondary computer vision model and named it the “ambiance mode.” In this mode, the last three convolutional layers of SSDLite MobileNetV2 are trained through transfer learning on a weather dataset. The dataset comprises around 500 images from four classes: cloudy, rainy, foggy, and sunrise. In this mode, the proposed system will narrate the surrounding scene elaborately, almost like a human describing a landscape or a beautiful sunset to a visually impaired person. The performance of the object detection and ambiance description modes are tested and evaluated in a desktop computer and Raspberry Pi embedded system. Detection accuracy and mean average precision, frame rate, confusion matrix, and ROC curve measure the model's accuracy on both setups. This low-cost proposed system is believed to help visually impaired people in their day-to-day life

Assessment of leaf properties on mustard varieties exhibiting resistance to aphid and sawfly infestation

The current study was conducted in the experimental field of the Department of Entomology, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University, Gazipur, Bangladesh from November 2019 to March 2020 to explore host plant resistance of seven mustard varieties, namely BARI Sarisha-11, BARI Sarisha-12, BARI Sarisha-13, BARI Sarisha-14, BARI Sarisha-15, BARI Sarisha-16, and BARI Sarisha-17 against sawfly and aphid based on leaf biochemical parameters. Chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, reducing sugar, protein, and proline of leaf showed significant variations but Soil Plant Analysis Development (SPAD) value showed no statistical variation among the varieties. The mean infestation rate of sawfly was the highest in BARI Sarisha-12 (4.2±2.2%) and the lowest was in BARI Sarisha-13 (0.0±0.0%). The infestation of aphid was also the lowest in BARI Sarisha-13 (15.2±0.7%), but the highest was in BARI Sarisha-14 (24.9±1.5%). The correlation matrix showed that the estimated biochemical contents of leaf except proline showed positive influence on the infestation of both sawfly and aphid, but only reducing sugar, protein and proline showed significant results. Among the studied varieties, BARI Sarisha-13 showed comparatively lower level of abundance and infestation of both sawfly and aphi