Exploring the Most Efficient Transportation Mode for Cement Industries: A Case Study from Bangladesh Perspective

Cement industry of Bangladesh is the 40th largest cement market in the world. The current capacity of the cement industry of Bangladesh is about 20 mn tons (MT) per year. The top 13 players of the market control over 78% of the total industry capacity. The major players in this industry are Shah, Lafarge Surma, Holcim, Cemex, Heidelberg, Premier, Akij, and Scan cement. This paper reviews that considering all factors, river transportation is the most efficient distribution channel for cement industry in Bangladesh. Keywords: Supply chain management, transportation, river transportation, cement industry

The Magnitude of Cultural Factors That Affect School Enrolment and Retention in Afghanistan: An Analysis Through Hofstede’s Cultural Model

This study aims to measure the magnitude of the cultural factors that affect enrolment and retention in both primary and secondary education levels in Afghanistan and advocate cultural transformation or modification in Afghanistan to enhance enrolment and retention in school. The study uses quantitative and particularly qualitative data regarding cultural constraints to school enrolment and retention in Afghanistan from secondary sources like Afghan government publications, private publications, publications from non-government organizations, journal articles, newspaper articles, newsletter articles, web documents, dissertations, published interviews, database articles, and books. It employs Hofstede’s cultural dimensions model to analyze the cultural factors. However, the study found out that on the scale of Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions model, Afghan culture was characterized by high degree of power distance, masculinity, i.e., conventional gender role focus, high level of uncertainty avoidance, and long term orientation that were deterrents to education in Afghanistan. Finally, it recommends a culture with low level of power distance, femininity focus, low degree of uncertainty avoidance, and long term orientation to increase school enrolments and retention in Afghanistan

Blockchain Applications to Mitigate the Effects of Supply Chain Disruptions

The inherent nature of complex relationships among partners made the supply chain (SC) prone to disruptions. The SC disruptions have severe negative consequences on SC performance. Firms are constantly seeking appropriate strategies that can mitigate the effects of SC disruption. The extant literature in information systems suggests that modern technologies can be used in the supply chain to mitigate the risks caused by SC disruptions. Blockchain is a novel disruptive technology that has promising applications in the supply chain. Because of its special characteristics, blockchain is perceived to be immutable, secured, and transparent. As a part of mitigating strategy, this paper shows how adoption of blockchain technology can lessen the detrimental effects of SC disruptions by developing SC capabilities. The blockchain-enabled SC capabilities are flexibility, traceability, transparency, visibility, collaboration, and trust

Potentials of forest ecosystem services for primate conservation and human wellbeing

Ecosystems supply numerous valuable services which are crucial for maintaining human wellbeing. However, the value of these Ecosystem Services (ESS) are yet to be fully captured or quantified and how they contribute to ecosystem conservation and the wellbeing of people are not properly understood. This thesis aims to add to this knowledge through the use of four case studies from two forests in Asia. Using these two important forests, this research project aimed to answer four key research questions: 1. What is the estimated value of the ESS obtained from the forest ecosystem? 2. What are the potentials of recreational service based management in sustainable conservation? 3. What are the interactions between livelihood capitals and access of local communities to the forest ecosystem services and how does this impact their daily lives and wellbeing? 4. What are the potentials of ecosystem services for improving human wellbeing of directly dependent communities? The case studies were conducted at the Veun Sai-Siem Pang National Park (VSSPNP) in Cambodia, and the Sundarbans Mangrove Forest (SMF) in Bangladesh. In order to estimate the value of VSSPNP, I used academically well-established formulas and methods for each service. Primary data were collected by conducting interview and secondary data were obtained from published literature and official records of the respective authorities. I estimated the total annual contribution of VSSPNP to be US$129.84million contributed by air purification, water storage, soil-erosion reduction, soil-fertility improvement, carbon sequestration, provisioning services and recreation. The area also generated valuable non-monetary values including academic and non-academic knowledge, created a diverse network worldwide, and shaped the culture of local indigenous people. Given the high value of the area, a properly designed ecosystem-based ecotourism program (CBET) was developed. This program was assessed in terms of its impact on human wellbeing by surveying the demography of tourists and their conservation attitudes towards the CBET program. In total 36 tourists were interviewed twice (before and after visiting the site). In addition, data were collected from the official records of the management authority (Conservation International or CI), face to face interviews with 35 indigenous families and focus group discussions with local people including both CBET members and non-members. I found that the CBET program increased the recreational value of VSSPNP and there was a significant improvement in the level of satisfaction of the tourists after visiting the site. CBET also significantly increased the intention for collective action and cooperation for conservation of the forest amongst people. Similarly, in the Shyamnagar upazila vicinity of the Sundarbans Mangrove Forest (SMF), I conducted interviews with the heads of 104 households to determine the level of access to provisioning services (a type of ESS) to better understand the trade-offs made by the households when selecting which services to use. I found that the interactions between livelihood capitals (human, physical, financial, natural and social) are key contributors to the level of access a person has to a given service and that PS contributed significantly in availability and cleanliness of non-drinking water as well as significantly improving the capacity of people to maintain social freedom. I then divided these 104 households into high access (income≥ US$893/yr) and lower access (<US$893/yr) families based on the income they received from provisioning service collection and collected data on four general wellbeing criteria. The effect of each criterion on wellbeing was measured and showed that only physical health and economic security significantly improved with the increase in PS collection as food sufficiency was significantly decreased with the increase in the amount of PS collection. A higher amount of PS extraction also tends to significantly weaken the collectors physically while mental health decreased. These case studies suggest a participatory approach of forest conservation has the potentials to make a difference for wildlife and human populations and these relationships need to be better understood to fully understand how important forests are for local people. This will help make better conservation action plans that ensure forests are maintained and that people’s expectations of how they can use the forest are secured

Ultrasound Elastography: Deep Learning Approach

Ultrasound elastography images the elasticity of a biological tissue. Conventional algorithms for ultrasound elastography suffer from different noises severely compromising the quality of time-delay estimation. Calculation of time-delay estimation is a key component of strain estimation. However, time-delay estimation is analogous to optical flow estimation, a classical computer vision problem. Deep learning networks have reported recent success in optical flow estimation compared to the conventional techniques. Classical ultrasound elastography algorithms have been unable to provide a single solution to both commonly known issues of noise and computation time. Deep learning techniques have a bright prospect in addressing both issues. The goal of this thesis is to investigate whether optical flow estimation is translatable to ultrasound elastography as the core nature of both of these problems are analogous. In this thesis we aim to develop and train a robust deep neural network for ultrasound elastography. First, an efficient deep learning network trained for optical flow estimation is used for time-delay estimation. The initial time-delay estimation is further fine-tuned by optimizing a global cost function for generating high quality strain images. Simulation, phantom and clinical experiments show the robustness of the deep learning approach both quantitatively and qualitatively. Next, the weights of the deep learning network are fine-tuned using transfer learning technique for transferring the efficacy of optical flow estimation to time-delay estimation. The objective is to retain the robustness introduced by the deep learning network while enhancing the overall performance of the time-delay estimation in ultrasound elastography. Simulation and experimental phantom results show that the time-delay estimation has improved slightly after fine-tuning the weights using transfer learning

EGFRシングルドメインコウタイ(VHH)ノアモルファスギョウシュウニユウドウサレルメンエキオウトウノカイセキ

博士（工学）東京農工大

Hydrogeochemistry and microbial geochemistry of different depth aquifer sediments from Matlab Bangladesh: relation to arsenic contamination in groundwaters

Master of ScienceDepartment of GeologySaugata DattaThe incidence of high arsenic (As) and other oxyanions (e.g. Mn) has been examined in a ~410km[superscript]2 areas within the Bengal Delta between North and South Matlab, Bangladesh. The aim of this study was to examine the role of sediment geochemistry, coupled with microbial community studies and their relations with different colors and grain sizes of sediments, in determining evolved groundwater hydrochemistry within the aquifers in Matlab. Groundwaters are Ca–Mg–HCO[subscript]3- types in shallow aquifers, Mg-HCO[subscript]3- in the intermediate depths and Na-K-Cl rich in the deeper aquifers. Dissolved As concentration is high (~781μg/l) associated with shallow grey and dark grey sediments, whereas light grey sediments at intermediate depths contain lower As (<10 μg/l). Dissolved Fe[superscript]T on other hand in both sediment types (light grey and grey) shows good correlation with dissolved SO[subscript]4[superscript]2-. In plots of [delta]δ[superscript]18O vs [delta]δD, intermediate and deeper depth aquifer waters plot on the arrays for LMWL and GMWL, which indicates the principal recharge mechanism is likely to be from local precipitation within the shallow aquifers. Only the high As groundwaters deflect from the LMWL, indicating that recharge might be a mixture of precipitation and surficial discharges / infiltrations for these waters. Bulk extraction of sediments showed that grey and dark grey sediments from shallow depths have higher As concentrations (~31 mg/kg) and light grey sediments have comparatively less (~11mg/kg). Sequential extractions for sediment fractionations showed that most of the As was bound to amorphous and poorly crystalline hydrous oxides of Fe and Al phases. Synchrotron-aided bulk-XANES studies conducted on sediments revealed As and S speciation in the core samples at different depths indicating the occurrences of hotspots of As distributed randomly in light grey and grey sediments. As[superscript]3+ is the dominant species in Matlab sediments. More than 101 bacterial families were identified among the eight sediment samples from the South Matlab core and out of them fewer than six families comprised more than ~80% of total bacterial families. Our results indicate significant relationships between bacterial community structure, grain size fractionation, dissolved As concentration and sediment C, Mn, and Fe concentrations for these samples. Groundwater abstracted from these light grey sediments, in contrast to reduced greyish to dark greyish sediments, contain significantly lower amounts of dissolved As and can be a source of safe water for the future. Our work demonstrates that intermediate depth light grey sediments have geochemical and microbial features conducive with safe drinking water for the future

Measuring Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Each Attribute of a Product: A Review on Hedonic Pricing Model

The Hedonic pricing model requires that a good, per se does not provide utility; it is the characteristics of the good that gives rise to utility. The total amount of utility a consumer receives from the consumption of a good is subject to the total amount of the characteristics contained in a good purchased. The marginal monetary value of the good’s characteristics is the product of the marginal unit of the characteristics in the good and the marginal implicit prices of the characteristics. In fact, this model reflects actual choices made by consumers, and they can adopt it to estimate their willingness to pay for a good’s characteristics considering several possible interactions between the good’s characteristics–both internal and external. It can be used in product innovation, product packaging, and designing additive services, which gives a producer a competitive advantage in the market. On the other hand, this model may be counterproductive in an environment where information asymmetry exists as it captures only the willingness to pay for perceived differences of attributes and their direct consequences. Therefore, the effective analysis of this model highly depends on the correctness of model specification and different functional forms. Keywords: Hedonic pricing model, willingness to pay, revealed preference, equilibrium price, and regression analysi

Meteorology Misconceptions Held by Students in an Earth Science Course for K-5 Teachers

Students hold misconceptions when they confidently believe certain information, but that information differs from the commonly accepted scientific consensus. 1 Misconceptions accumulate over time due to a combination of incorrect perceptions of everyday experiences, over-simplifications and over-generalizations found in textbooks and the media, and incorrect or incomplete diagrams and analogies.2-7 Clausen described misconceptions held by teachers, and how they affected student learning. 8 After observing several teachers teaching about weather and climate change, he concluded that personal beliefs and values impacted what parts of science they emphasized in the classroom, resulting in students learning the content differently and inconsistently. This study is important because the participants will be teaching shortly; it is imperative for these teachers to fully understand the content that they are educating their students on. If they have weather misconceptions, it could be damaging to their future students\u27 understanding of this foundational content that they will need throughout their lives.https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/celebration_posters_2024/1046/thumbnail.jp

Effects of Incorporating Recycled Brick and Stone Aggregate as Replacement of Natural Stone Aggregate in Concrete

This paper presents an experimental research on the mechanical properties of concrete made from recycled and virgin coarse aggregates. Two types of recycled coarse aggregate (RCA) i.e. recycled brick aggregate (RBA) and recycled stone aggregate (RSA) were used in combination with natural stone aggregate (NSA). This study aims to investigate the feasibility of using recycled materials in concrete by focusing on the fracture mechanism of the specimens. For this purpose, sixty-six cylindrical specimens and thirty-three prismatic specimens were cast using 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 100% RBA and RSA as a replacement of NSA with different absolute water/cement (w/c) ratio. The test results show that the compressive, flexural and splitting strengths of concrete made from RSA were greater than those of RBA. Besides, concrete contains RSA has the lower strengths fall than that of concrete contains RBA in each percentage of recycled aggregate. The RSA concrete showed combined failure of concrete; on the contrary, aggregate failure which is not acceptable for good quality concrete has been observed in RBA concrete. Therefore, the use of RBA with NSA is not appropriate to produce good quality concrete, but replacing NSA with up to 30% of RSA can be effectively used