Motivation, Success Factors and Challenges of Entrepreneurs in Khulna City of Bangladesh

Bangladesh is a high densely populated country where creating employment opportunity is a great challenge. Development of entrepreneurship can be a positive advancement in this regard because of its recognized role of creating sufficient scope of employment.  Considering this significance, this study has put a great stride to identify motivation, success factors and the challenges of entrepreneurs in Khulna City of Bangladesh. Data were collected from entrepreneurs running business in this city using structured questionnaires developed based on previous studies. Factor analysis was applied first to find the factors associated with motivation, success and challenges of entrepreneurs and later multiple regression technique was used to identify the factors which are statistically significant. This study has found independence, personal and family security, self employment and intrinsic factors are associated with motivation where independence, personal and family security, and self employment are statistically significant. Business environment, policy issues, infrastructure, raw materials, political instability and costs of equipment are found linked with challenges of entrepreneurs in Khulna city where business environment, infrastructure, and raw material are statistically significant. It has been identified that managerial capability, experience and training, family support and honesty, social network, and price and location are success factors. Managerial capability, experience and training, family support and honesty are significant statistically. Keywords: Motivation, Success, Challenge, Entrepreneur

Customer Satisfaction of Telecom Industry in Khulna City, Bangladesh

Customers are the hearts of any industry. Telecommunication being a service oriented industry always puts priority to find ways of making customers happy and satisfied. Sensing this importance, this study was conducted to determine what makes customers of Telecommunication Industry satisfied. Researchers confined the study within Khulna City, a divisional city of Bangladesh. A structured questionnaire developed based on previous works was distributed among 300 customers of Grameen Phone, Teletalk, Rabi who were selected conveniently for the study. Only 288 competed questionnaire properly thus used for analysis. A customer satisfaction model was developed including variables taken from the extensive review of previous literature. Those variables are customer service, personal and market factors, perceived quality, perceived value, technological advancement and company image. Model was tested using STATA, statistical software package, and found personal and market factor, perceived quality, perceived value and company image statistically significant. Keywords: Telecommunication Industry, Customer Satisfaction, Competitio

Detection and Processing Techniques of FECG Signal for Fetal Monitoring

Fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) signal contains potentially precise information that could assist clinicians in making more appropriate and timely decisions during labor. The ultimate reason for the interest in FECG signal analysis is in clinical diagnosis and biomedical applications. The extraction and detection of the FECG signal from composite abdominal signals with powerful and advance methodologies are becoming very important requirements in fetal monitoring. The purpose of this review paper is to illustrate the various methodologies and developed algorithms on FECG signal detection and analysis to provide efficient and effective ways of understanding the FECG signal and its nature for fetal monitoring. A comparative study has been carried out to show the performance and accuracy of various methods of FECG signal analysis for fetal monitoring. Finally, this paper further focused some of the hardware implementations using electrical signals for monitoring the fetal heart rate. This paper opens up a passage for researchers, physicians, and end users to advocate an excellent understanding of FECG signal and its analysis procedures for fetal heart rate monitoring system

Design and application of radio frequency identification systems

The recent world, development of effective technologies for linking the object wireless information is being prompted in various fields. Radio frequency identification (RFID) is the latest technology for automatic identification which allows the transmission of a unique serial number wirelessly. The purpose of this paper is to review RFID systems and its various components infrastructure. The components and features are still under research and being integrated in existing systems to create a marketable and potential new system. To achieve higher performance; low cost, low power RFID tag with efficient anticollision technique which provides a large throughput and flexible security mechanism is required. The review has shown different types of readers, antennas and tags which would becomes a bottleneck to reduce the RFID cost. The paper has shown details the entire components where RFID researchers will get benefit for the development of future technology. The challenges of RFID system design with the entire components (Reader, Tag and Antenna) and its advantages, disadvantages are briefly explained

Estimating Blood Pressure from Photoplethysmogram Signal and Demographic Features using Machine Learning Techniques

Hypertension is a potentially unsafe health ailment, which can be indicated directly from the Blood pressure (BP). Hypertension always leads to other health complications. Continuous monitoring of BP is very important; however, cuff-based BP measurements are discrete and uncomfortable to the user. To address this need, a cuff-less, continuous and a non-invasive BP measurement system is proposed using Photoplethysmogram (PPG) signal and demographic features using machine learning (ML) algorithms. PPG signals were acquired from 219 subjects, which undergo pre-processing and feature extraction steps. Time, frequency and time-frequency domain features were extracted from the PPG and their derivative signals. Feature selection techniques were used to reduce the computational complexity and to decrease the chance of over-fitting the ML algorithms. The features were then used to train and evaluate ML algorithms. The best regression models were selected for Systolic BP (SBP) and Diastolic BP (DBP) estimation individually. Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) along with ReliefF feature selection algorithm outperforms other algorithms in estimating SBP and DBP with a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 6.74 and 3.59 respectively. This ML model can be implemented in hardware systems to continuously monitor BP and avoid any critical health conditions due to sudden changes.Comment: Accepted for publication in Sensor, 14 Figures, 14 Table

Identification of a Novel Therapeutic Target against XDR Salmonella Typhi H58 Using Genomics Driven Approach Followed Up by Natural Products Virtual Screening

Typhoid fever is caused by a pathogenic, rod-shaped, flagellated, and Gram-negative bacterium known as Salmonella Typhi. It features a polysaccharide capsule that acts as a virulence factor and deceives the host immune system by protecting phagocytosis. Typhoid fever remains a major health concern in low and middle-income countries, with an estimated death rate of ~200,000 per annum. However, the situation is exacerbated by the emergence of the extensively drug-resistant (XDR) strain designated as H58 of S. Typhi. The emergence of the XDR strain is alarming, and it poses serious threats to public health due to the failure of the current therapeutic regimen. A relatively newer computational method called subtractive genomics analyses has been widely applied to discover novel and new drug targets against pathogens, particularly drug-resistant ones. The method involves the gradual reduction of the complete proteome of the pathogen, leading to few potential and novel drug targets. Thus, in the current study, a subtractive genomics approach was applied against the Salmonella XDR strain to identify potential drug targets. The current study predicted four prioritized proteins (i.e., Colanic acid biosynthesis acetyltransferase wcaB, Shikimate dehydrogenase aroE, multidrug efflux RND transporter permease subunit MdtC, and pantothenate synthetase panC) as potential drug targets. Though few of the prioritized proteins are treated in the literature as the established drug targets against other pathogenic bacteria, these drug targets are identified here for the first time against S. Typhi (i.e., S. Typhi XDR). The current study aimed at drawing attention to new drug targets against S. Typhi that remain largely unexplored. One of the prioritized drug targets, i.e., Colanic acid biosynthesis acetyltransferase, was predicted as a unique, new drug target against S. Typhi XDR. Therefore, the Colanic acid was further explored using structure-based techniques. Additionally, ~1000 natural compounds were docked with Colanic acid biosynthesis acetyltransferase, resulting in the prediction of seven compounds as potential lead candidates against the S. Typhi XDR strain. The ADMET properties and binding energies via the docking program of these seven compounds characterized them as novel drug candidates. They may potentially be used for the development of future drugs in the treatment of Typhoid fever

A CMOS power splitter for 2,45 GHz ISM band RFID reader in 0,18 µm CMOS technology

Identifikacija radio frekvencije (RFID) je jedna od najbrže rastućih tehnologija uporabljiva u gotovo svakom sektoru za pohranu i bežično uzimanje podataka. Trenutni napredak u CMOS tehnologiji pomaže znanstvenicima i tehnolozima smanjiti dimenzije i poboljšati funkcionalnost RFID sklopova. U ovom radu ilustrirana je konstrukcija jednog RF-CMOS razdvajača snage električnog kruga u 0,18 µm Silterra RF-CMOS tehnologiji za 2,45 GHz RFID čitač. Wilkinsonov razdjelnik snage izabran je za predloženi razdvajač snage električnog kruga s induktorima i kondenzatorima na čipu. Predloženi razdvajač snage ostvaruje najveći gubitak zbog umetanja od 10 dB. AWR Microwave Office® koristi se za simulaciju električnog kruga i za određivanje njegovih S-parametara. Za konstruiranje induktora s točnim vrijednostima u 2,45 GHz rabljen je Sonnet® dok je Cadence® rabljen za razmještaj kondenzatora i otpornika.Radio frequency identification (RFID) is one of the most rapidly growing technologies to be utilized in almost every sector for storing and retrieving data wirelessly. Current advancements in CMOS technology help the scientists and technologists to reduce the size and improve the functionalities of the RFID circuits. In this paper, the design of an RF-CMOS power splitter circuit in 0,18 µm Silterra RF-CMOS technology is illustrated for a 2,45 GHz RFID reader. Wilkinson power divider is chosen for the proposed power splitter circuit with on-chip inductors and capacitors. The proposed power splitter achieves a maximum insertion loss of 10 dB. AWR Microwave Office® is used for the simulation of the circuit and for determination of its S-parameters. To design the inductors with accurate values in 2,45 GHz Sonnet® is used whereas Cadence® is used for capacitor and resistor layout