Degradation of Coastal Habitats and Aquatic Resources in the Upper Bay of Bengal : Is Aquatic Pollution to Blame?

Abstracts of 3rd UNU-ORI joint international workshop for marine environment海洋環境国際ワークショップ講演要

Household food security is associated with infant feeding practices in rural Bangladesh.

Although household food security (HHFS) has been shown to affect diet, nutrition, and health of adults and also learning in children, no study has examined associations with infant feeding practices (IFP). We studied 1343 infants born between May 2002 and December 2003 in the Maternal and Infant Nutrition Intervention in Matlab study to investigate the effect of HHFS on IFP in rural Bangladesh. We measured HHFS using a previously developed 11-item scale. Cumulative and current infant feeding scales were created from monthly infant feeding data for the age groups of 1-3, 1-6, 1-9, and 1-12 mo based on comparison to infant feeding recommendations. We used lagged, dynamic, and difference longitudinal regression models adjusting for various infant and maternal variables to examine the association between HHFS and changes in IFP, and Cox proportional hazards models to examine the influence of HHFS on the duration of breast-feeding and the time of introduction of complementary foods. Better HHFS status was associated with poor IFP during 3-6 mo but was associated with better IFP during 6-9 and 9-12 mo of age. Although better HHFS was not associated with the time of introduction of complementary foods, it was associated with the type of complementary foods given to the infants. Intervention programs to support proper IFP should target mothers in food-secure households when their babies are 3-6 mo old and also mothers in food-insecure households during the 2nd half of infancy. Our results provide strong evidence that HHFS influences IFP in rural Bangladesh

Degradation of Coastal Habitats and Aquatic Resources in the Upper Bay of Bengal : Is Aquatic Pollution to Blame?

Abstracts of 3rd UNU-ORI joint international workshop for marine environment海洋環境国際ワークショップ講演要

Plant probiotic bacteria Bacillus and Paraburkholderia improve growth, yield and content of antioxidants in strawberry fruit

Strawberry is an excellent source of natural antioxidants with high capacity of scavenging free radicals. This study evaluated the effects of two plant probiotic bacteria, Bacillus amylolequefaciens BChi1 and Paraburkholderia fungorum BRRh-4 on growth, fruit yield and antioxidant contents in strawberry fruits. Root dipping of seedlings (plug plants) followed by spray applications of both probiotic bacteria in the field on foliage significantly increased fruit yield (up to 48%) over non-treated control. Enhanced fruit yield likely to be linked with higher root and shoot growth, individual and total fruit weight/plant and production of phytohormone by the probiotic bacteria applied on plants. Interestingly, the fruits from plants inoculated with the isolates BChi1 and BRRh-4 had significantly higher contents of phenolics, carotenoids, flavonoids and anthocyanins over non-treated control. Total antioxidant activities were also significantly higher (p \u3c 0.05) in fruits of strawberry plants treated with both probiotic bacteria. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of significant improvement of both yield and quality of strawberry fruits by the application of plant probiotic bacteria BChi1 and BRRh-4 in a field condition. Further study is needed to elucidate underlying mechanism of growth and quality improvement of strawberry fruits by probiotic bacteria

Predictors of the number of under-five malnourished children in Bangladesh: application of the generalized poisson regression model

Islam MM, Alam M, Tariquzaman M, et al. Predictors of the number of under-five malnourished children in Bangladesh: application of the generalized poisson regression model. BMC Public Health. 2013;13(1): 11.BACKGROUND: Malnutrition is one of the principal causes of child mortality in developing countries including Bangladesh. According to our knowledge, most of the available studies, that addressed the issue of malnutrition among under-five children, considered the categorical (dichotomous/polychotomous) outcome variables and applied logistic regression (binary/multinomial) to find their predictors. In this study malnutrition variable (i.e. outcome) is defined as the number of under-five malnourished children in a family, which is a non-negative count variable. The purposes of the study are (i) to demonstrate the applicability of the generalized Poisson regression (GPR) model as an alternative of other statistical methods and (ii) to find some predictors of this outcome variable. METHODS: The data is extracted from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) 2007. Briefly, this survey employs a nationally representative sample which is based on a two-stage stratified sample of households. A total of 4,460 under-five children is analysed using various statistical techniques namely Chi-square test and GPR model. RESULTS: The GPR model (as compared to the standard Poisson regression and negative Binomial regression) is found to be justified to study the above-mentioned outcome variable because of its under-dispersion (variance < mean) property. Our study also identify several significant predictors of the outcome variable namely mother's education, father's education, wealth index, sanitation status, source of drinking water, and total number of children ever born to a woman. CONCLUSIONS: Consistencies of our findings in light of many other studies suggest that the GPR model is an ideal alternative of other statistical models to analyse the number of under-five malnourished children in a family. Strategies based on significant predictors may improve the nutritional status of children in Bangladesh

Assessment of Heavy Metals in the Sediments of Chalan Beel Wetland Area in Bangladesh

This study aimed to determine the levels and possible sources of heavy metals (HMs) in the sediments of Chalan beel (a large lake-like aquatic ecosystem) area located in the northwestern part of Bangladesh. The mean concentrations (mg kg−1) of two HMs, Cd (6.22) and Pb (51.39) exceeded the world normal averages (WNA), whereas the mean concentrations (mg kg−1) of Ni (60.46), Zn (10.75), Mn (8.64) and Cu (4.71) were below the WNA. The sediments showed significant enrichment with Cd, Pb and Ni in the studied area. The geo-accumulation index values of Cd (3.72) and Pb (0.76) were significantly higher in the sediments. The contamination factor and potential ecological risk index values of Cd and Pb revealed that Chalan beel was extremely and moderately contaminated by these heavy metals, respectively. Analysis of dye complexes used in handlooms around the Chalan beel areas revealed that mean concentrations of Cd and Pb exceeded the WNA. Furthermore, analyses of principal component, cluster and correlation matrix indicated that the presence of the higher levels of Cd and Pb in the sediments might be linked to various anthropogenic activities like discharged dyes into the beel water from the nearby handloom dyeing factories