Md. Jahangir Alam - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Md. Jahangir Alam

Social Science Review, 2022

Under nutrition is common in children with cerebral palsy (CP) due to oromotor dysfunction and fe... more Under nutrition is common in children with cerebral palsy (CP) due to oromotor dysfunction and feeding difficulties. Responsive feeding is a growing concern in nutrition field as a potential intervention for caregiver’s behaviour change during feeding. This study was designed to identify the feeding style of caregiver and the role of responsive behaviour on food refusal and nutritional status of young children with CP. This was a cross-sectional mix method study. Participants were children with CP aged between 18-36 months. 66 caregiverchildren were selected as quantitative sample and 11 mothers were included in two focused group discussions for qualitative data. Children’s feeding session for one main meal was videotaped at a rehabilitation centre. Feeding styles were coded as active and responsive behaviour which was further categorized into positive and negative behaviour. Nutritional status was measured as weight for age z scores. Caregivers mostly used active behaviour than res...

CBR - Consumer Behavior Review, 2021

Consumers' preferences, satisfaction and, loyalty towards supermarkets in Bangladesh have be... more Consumers' preferences, satisfaction and, loyalty towards supermarkets in Bangladesh have been studied but this study aims to identify the customers' problem in buying from the supermarkets and their socio-economic characteristics along with present scenario and economic significance of the supermarket industry in Bangladesh. The study is empirical, mixed-method has been deployed, 400 customers of the supermarkets were surveyed by mall intercept technique through a questionnaire, 6 in-depth interviews were conducted with the supermarkets' professionals and relevant articles, publication, books, reports, journals, newspapers and websites were reviewed. Descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and factor analysis were performed in analyzing the data. There are 211 outlets of major supermarkets in Bangladesh, which are contributing 1.49 % to the GDP and generating significant employment. Upper-middle and high class, highly educated, small family are the customers who fac...

In this study, attempts were made to investigate the growth and yield performance of a Bangladesh... more In this study, attempts were made to investigate the growth and yield performance of a Bangladeshi bread wheat cultivar (Sonalica) under the influence of three different nitrogen fertilizer levels and one concentration level of ComCat ® , a commercial bio-stimulant, applied either as a seed treatment before planting or as a foliar spray on seedlings at the 3- leaf growth stage, under glasshouse conditions. Initially the South African (RSA) standard N-level for winter wheat was taken as the medium N- level together with a down scaled (low) and an up scaled (high) rate during the 2001 season in order to ascertain the optimum level. However, it was observed that the Bangladeshi cultivar could not tolerate the RSA standard (medium rate) for nitrogen application. After germination all plants fertilized with the medium and high nitrogen rates, died off. Subsequently, this N-level was taken as the medium level for the 2002 trial and a new down scaled (low) and up scaled (high) N-level was ...

Faridpur Medical College Journal, 2021

Efficient blood transfusion facility in the casualty wards is essential to minimize the morbidity... more Efficient blood transfusion facility in the casualty wards is essential to minimize the morbidity and mortality of the injured patients. Proper knowledge of blood transfusion demand in a facility can help forecast future demands and facilitate the planning of existing resources allocation for best injury care. This cross-sectional study was conducted at the causality wards of Dhaka Medical College Hospital from July 2018 to December 2018. During this period, patients who attended the casualty wards and needed whole blood transfusion were selected as the study population. Relevant information regarding the required blood units, blood group, and blood collection source were recorded and analyzed. During our study period, 1619 units of whole blood were required by 896 patients. Most of the study population were from the age group of 31-40 years. Male group was the predominant at a 3.9:1 male-female ratio. Majority of the patients (55.13%) required only one unit of blood, and 28.57% of ...

Journal of Biological Chemistry, 1989

Treatment of mouse hepatoma (Hepa) cells with heme or cadmium chloride in serum-free medium cause... more Treatment of mouse hepatoma (Hepa) cells with heme or cadmium chloride in serum-free medium causes a rapid increase in the steady-state level of heme oxygenase (HO) messenger RNA. This increase is both dose-and time-dependent. Maximum accumulation of HO mRNA is observed 3 h after addition of either agent. Treatment of Hepa cells with heme or CdClz also stimulates the transcription of the HO gene, as judged by in vitro nuclear transcription run-on assays. The maximum rate of HO gene transcription occurs 2 h after treatment with either agent. Comparison of the relative increase in the rate of HO gene transcription with the relative increase in the level of HO mRNA demonstrates that transcriptional activation is the primary mechanism by which heme and cadmium produce the accumulation of HO mRNA in Hepa cells. Cadmium may also influence other processes involved in the expression of HO, since the time course of mRNA accumulation diverges from that of gene transcription. However, neither heme nor cadmium alters the rate of HO mRNA degradation. Cobalt chloride and heat shock, which are potent inducers of HO mRNA in rat liver and rat C6 glioma cells, respectively, have only a small effect on the level of HO mRNA in mouse hepatoma cells. Microsomal heme oxygenase catalyzes the rate-limiting step in heme catabolism, the oxidative degradation of heme to biliverdin (1). Under physiological conditions, the HO activity is highest in the spleen, where senescent erythrocytes are sequestered and destroyed (2). In contrast, the activity in the liver is approximately one-tenth of that observed in the spleen (1). However, HO activity is readily increased in liver and certain other tissues (2-4) by intravenous administration of heme' (in the form of hemin) and in cultured cells (5, 6) by addition of the substrate to the culture media. HO activity is also induced by a variety of substances including heme analogues (7), certain metal ions (8, 9), bromobenzene (lo), endotoxin (ll), and some hormones (6).

Journal of Biological Chemistry, 1992

Rheumatology and therapy, 2018

This article evaluates the efficacy and safety of baricitinib 4 mg versus placebo in United State... more This article evaluates the efficacy and safety of baricitinib 4 mg versus placebo in United States including Puerto Rico (US) and rest of the world (ROW) subpopulations using data pooled from RA-BEAM and RA-BUILD, which enrolled patients with moderate-to-severe adult-onset rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In RA-BEAM, patients with an inadequate response (IR) to methotrexate, at least one X-ray erosion, and high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) ≥ 6 mg/L were randomized to placebo or orally administered baricitinib 4 mg daily or subcutaneously administered adalimumab 40 mg every other week. In RA-BUILD, patients with an IR to at least one conventional synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (csDMARD) and with hsCRP ≥ 3.6 mg/L were randomized to placebo or baricitinib 2 or 4 mg daily. Patients in both trials were biologic naive. In this post hoc analysis, data from both studies were pooled (714 baricitinib 4 mg-treated, 716 placebo-treated patients). Overall, 188 US and 1242 ROW...

Computer Engineering and Intelligent Systems, 2012

The introduction of PrePaid billing system for electricity at households are claimed to be an add... more The introduction of PrePaid billing system for electricity at households are claimed to be an addition to the convenience of subscribers, especially by excusing the hassles of bills payments associated to the Post-Paid system. Among the other benefits of PrePaid system, user control over electricity consumption, freedom from discrepancies regarding to billing etc. are largely spoken about. These conveniences brought by the PrePaid billing system should therefore, obviously result in a higher satisfaction level of the subscribers compared to those of the Post-Paid system. But, any such systematic and focused study is yet to have taken place, although that might carry mentionable significance from a number of perspectives. This study is a humble yet strongly rooted quest to address the very issues that contributes to the satisfaction levels of the subscribers of electricity at household levels. Conducted on 50 subscribers from both PrePaid and Post-Paid systems of Sylhet city, this study can be considered as 'Small Scale' that aims to construct a comparative picture of the satisfaction level of the subscribers of the two systems on the benchmark issues. The backbone of the study is the information acquired through a questionnaire survey conducted through 'In Home' type of personal interviewing. Along with the generation of findings, the study offers some implications and recommendation that may be used at policy levels.

Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics, Apr 2, 2016

The goal of this study was to explore the effects of trans-placental tetanus toxoid (TT) and pert... more The goal of this study was to explore the effects of trans-placental tetanus toxoid (TT) and pertussis (PT) antibodies on an infant's response to vaccination in the context of antenatal immunization with tetanus but not with pertussis. 38 mothers received a single dose of TT vaccine during pregnancy. Infants received tetanus and pertussis vaccines at 6, 10 and 14 wk of age. TT and PT anti-IgG secretion by infant lymphocytes was measured at 15 wk. Plasma antibodies were measured at 6 wk (pre-vaccination), 15 wk and 1 y of age. Prior to vaccination, TT and PT antibody were detected in 94.6% and 15.2% of infants. At 15 wk anti-TT-IgG and anti-PT-IgG in plasma was increased by 7-9 fold over pre-vaccination levels, while at 1 y plasma anti-TT-IgG was decreased by approximately 5-fold from the peak and had returned to near the pre-vaccination level. At 1 y plasma anti-PT-IgG was decreased by 2-fold 1 yfrom the 15 wk level. However, 89.5% and 82.3% of infants at 1 y had protective leve...

Journal of Current and Advance Medical Research, 2015

Background: Laparoscopic cholecystectomy quickly emerged as an alternative to open cholecystectom... more Background: Laparoscopic cholecystectomy quickly emerged as an alternative to open cholecystectomy. However its safety, efficacy, and morbidity have yet to be fully evaluated. Objective: The purpose of the present study was to determine the efficacy and safety of laparoscopic cholecystectomy Procedure in the removal of gall bladder stones at Faridpur district-one of the remote district of Bangladesh. Methodology: A prospective, nonrandomized, open label Consecutive study was carried out at Faridpur district using laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) procedure for the symptomatic treatment of Gall bladder stones. For this purpose a total number of 145 patients having conclusively diagnosed as gall bladder stones were enrolled. LC procedure was performed by North American technique-a well established and standard procedure described earlier for the purpose. The key variables studied were average operating room time, condition of the gall bladder, the presence or absence of stones, the character of stones, post-operative complicates and duration of hospital stay. Result: The study revealed that among 145 patients 83.4% were female with an average age of 40.3 years. The average operating time required was 130 minutes. Gall bladder was thickened but was free from adhesion in 96.5% cases and stones' only 3.45% patients needed open method due to fibrosis and adhesion of the gall bladder with omentum and gut. The duration of hospital or clinic stay following LC was 3.5 days. Evidence of infection like fever, pain etc. was seen only in 2.75% cases. Bleeding was present in 2.06% cases. This was corrected after blood transfusion. No injury to the common bile duct or any of the bile duct or any of the blood vessels was observed. Similarly no evidence of malignancy was seen in any of the gall bladder removed. Conclusion: The present study concludes that laparoscopic cholecystectomy is a safe, minimal invasive, cost-effective and safe procedure for the symptomatic treatment of gall bladder stones.

The Halda River of Bangladesh has immense importance as it is the only natural spawning ground of... more The Halda River of Bangladesh has immense importance as it is the only natural spawning ground of major carp fishes. In the present survey, the overall fish distribution and biodiversity from the upper portion of Halda River along with its two tributaries were studied. The sampling stations were Nazirhat Bridge, Sattarghat Bridge and Garduara. Fishes were collected directly from sampling stations two times in a month during the period of January to December, 2012. The species diversity was analyzed using the following diversity indices: Simpson dominance index (D); Simpson index of diversity (1-D); Shannon–Weiner index (H); Evenness index and Margalef index with the help of software PAST (Pale ontological Statistics Software Package for Education and Data Analysis). Totally 4,337 individuals of fish were counted. 63 species belongs to 24 families and 51 genera were recorded. The most abundant family was Cyprinidae, having 817 individuals (18.84%) followed by Gobiidae family with 629...

2012 Third International Conference on Computing, Communication and Networking Technologies (ICCCNT'12), 2012

This paper presents asymmetric taper (or window)-based robust Mel frequency cepstral coefficient ... more This paper presents asymmetric taper (or window)-based robust Mel frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC) feature extraction for automatic speech recognition (ASR). Commonly, MFCC features are computed from a symmetric Hamming-tapered direct-spectrum estimate. Symmetric tapers have linear phase and also imply longer time delay. In ASR systems, phase information is usually discarded as human speech perception is relatively insensitive to short-time phase distortion. So, any linearity constraint on phase can be removed without adverse effects. Use of asymmetric tapers, having better frequency response and shorter time delay, for MFCC feature extraction in speech recognition can lead to better recognition performance. Using our proposed method it is possible to introduce asymmetry in any symmetric taper by adjusting only one additional parameter, which controls the degree of asymmetry. Experimental results on the AURORA-2 corpus show that the proposed asymmetric tapers outperform the symmetric Hamming taper in terms of word accuracy both in clean and noisy environments.

Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, 2014

ABSTRACT

Bangladesh Journal of Medical Science, 2015

Background: HAV infection is endemic in many developing countries like India, Pakistan, Nepal etc... more Background: HAV infection is endemic in many developing countries like India, Pakistan, Nepal etc. Several seroprevalence studies show high rates of sero-positivity among children by sub-clinical infection. Therefore mass vaccination against HAV has not been recommended in endemic countries. Objective: To determine whether routine hepatitis A vaccination is indicated for all Bangladeshi children & also to know whether pre-vaccination screening is necessary. Materials & Methods: Serum samples from 254 children aged between 1-15 years were tested for antibody (IgM & IgG) against hepatitis A virus (HAV) to determine the seroprevalence of HAV antibody and do a cost-benefit analysis for decision making about vaccination against HAV among the children of Bangladesh. Results: Hepatitis A virus antibody was positive in 141 (55.5%) of 254 children. Age-specific sero-prevalence was 13 (23.2%) of 56 in 1-3 year, 64 (55.2%) of 116 in 3-5 year, 39 (70.9%) of 55 in 5-10 year & 25 (92.6%) of 27 in...

Bangladesh Medical Research Council Bulletin, 2008

Tissue phantom ratio (TPR), for square fields of various dimensions has been determined at varyin... more Tissue phantom ratio (TPR), for square fields of various dimensions has been determined at varying depths in water. The dose in water has been measured at a fixed source-to-surface distance (SSD) of 100 cm and reference depth of 5 cm for 6 MV photon beam of Siemens Linear Accelerator Primus II in German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany. A modified formula has been developed to calculate the TPR value for isocentric treatment. The present article describes the conversion of the measured data values into a comprehensive and consistent data set by the modified formula, that gives the TPR from Percentage Depth Dose (PDD) with depth as a function of field sizes from 10 mm x 10 mm upto 300 mm x 300 mm) and depth (from 0 mm to 300 mm).

KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering, 2014

A parametric study using finite element method of analysis was undertaken to investigate the beha... more A parametric study using finite element method of analysis was undertaken to investigate the behavior of an anchored earth wall system supporting clay backfill. In this paper the effects of stiffness of reinforcing tendon, elastic modulus of backfill soil, elastic modulus of retained soil and anchor size on the behavior of the wall system are presented. It was observed that deformation of wall decreases with increasing stiffness of reinforcement and above certain value of stiffness it has no effect on deformation. Most important finding was that coefficient of lateral earth pressure depends on the stiffness of reinforcement. For extensible reinforcements (axial strain > 1%), coefficient of lateral earth pressure is less than that of an active pressure condition. Deformation decreases with increasing stiffness of backfill and retained soil. Anchor force also decreases with increasing stiffness of backfill but remains constant with the variation of stiffness of the retained soil. It was also concluded that anchor block may be designed for a factor of safety of 2 or more.

Influenza Research and Treatment, 2012

The pandemic influenza virus strains of 1918 (H1N1), 1957 (H2N2), 1968 (H3N2), and 2009 (H1N1) ha... more The pandemic influenza virus strains of 1918 (H1N1), 1957 (H2N2), 1968 (H3N2), and 2009 (H1N1) have genes related to avian influenza viruses (AIVs). The nonstructural (NS) gene of AIVs plays a significant role in host-viral interaction. However, little is known about the degree of diversity of this gene in Northern pintail (Anas acuta) ducks wintering in Japan. This study describes characteristics of pintail-originated H1N1, H1N2, H1N3, H5N2, H5N3, H5N9, and H7N7 viruses. Most of the viruses were revealed to be avian strains and not related to pandemic and seasonal flu strains. Nevertheless, the NP genes of 62.5% (5/8) viruses were found closely related to a A/swine/Korea/C12/08, indicating exchange of genetic material and ongoing mammalian-linked evolution of AIVs. Besides, all the viruses, except Aomori/422/07 H1N1, contain PSIQSR*GLF motif usually found in avian, porcine, and human H1 strains. The Aomori/422/07 H1N1 has a PSVQSR*GLF motif identical to a North American strain. Thi...

Bangladesh Journal of Anatomy, 2009

Context: Anatomical knowledge about length of trachea is essential for anesthetists, surgeons, ra... more Context: Anatomical knowledge about length of trachea is essential for anesthetists, surgeons, radiologists & sonologists. In anesthetic procedure, the knowledge of the length of trachea helps to select correct sizes of endotracheal tubes. Study Design: A descriptive type of study. Place and period of study: The study was carried out in the Department of Anatomy, Sir Salimullah Medical College, Dhaka, from July 2006 to June 2007. Materials: 47 trachea of Bangladeshi adult male, age ranged from 20 to 58 years within 24 hours after death which were autopsied in the Department of Forensic Medicine of Sir Salimullah Medical College & Dhaka Medical College, Dhaka. Method: The collected samples were divided into four age groups, ranged from 20 to 58 years and comparative studies were done between different age groups. Result: The length of trachea increased with advancing age. The values showed positive correlation with age & statistically was highly significant (P<0.001). Conclusion: ...

PsycEXTRA Dataset

We present a new technique for extraction of hand region from complex background and consequently... more We present a new technique for extraction of hand region from complex background and consequently detection of the fingertips, which we call hand features, from color images. Our construction is primarily based on an adaptive color model generation for hand segmentation followed by smoothing algorithm. We present a thinning algorithm followed by the construction of convex envelope to detect possible points for the fingertips. We demonstrate that the correct points for the fingertips can be selected heuristically through interpoints distance calculation. Finally, we show the effectiveness of the proposed method by experimenting with images of different background complexity and have achieved very promising results.

Speech Communication, 2013

In this paper we study the performance of the low-variance multi-taper Mel-frequency cepstral coe... more In this paper we study the performance of the low-variance multi-taper Mel-frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC) and perceptual linear prediction (PLP) features in a state-ofthe-art i-vector speaker verification system. The MFCC and PLP features are usually computed from a Hamming-windowed periodogram spectrum estimate. Such a singletapered spectrum estimate has large variance, which can be reduced by averaging spectral estimates obtained using a set of different tapers, leading to a so-called multitaper spectral estimate. The multi-taper spectrum estimation method has proven to be powerful especially when the spectrum of interest has a large dynamic range or varies rapidly. Multi-taper MFCC features were also recently studied in speaker verification with promising preliminary results. In this study our primary goal is to validate those findings using an up-to-date i-vector classifier on the latest NIST 2010 SRE data. In addition, we also propose to compute robust perceptual linear prediction (PLP) features using multitapers. Furthermore, we provide a detailed comparison between different taper weight selections in the Thomson multi-taper method in the context of speaker verification. Speaker verification results on the telephone (det5) and microphone speech (det1, det2, det3 and det4) of the latest NIST 2010 SRE corpus indicate that the multitaper methods outperform the conventional periodogram technique. Instead of simply averaging (using uniform weights) the individual spectral estimates in forming the multitaper estimate, weighted averaging (using non-uniform weights) improves performance. Compared to the MFCC and PLP baseline systems, the sine-weighted cepstrum estimator 2 (SWCE) based multitaper method provides average relative reductions of 12.3% and 7.5% in equal error rate, respectively. For the multi-peak multi-taper method, the corresponding reductions are 12.6% and 11.6%, respectively. Finally, the Thomson multitaper method provides error reductions of 9.5% and 5.0% in EER for MFCC and PLP features, respectively. We conclude that both the MFCC and PLP features computed via multitapers provide systematic improvements in recognition accuracy.