Advances in crowd analysis for urban applications through urban event detection

The recent expansion of pervasive computing technology has contributed with novel means to pursue human activities in urban space. The urban dynamics unveiled by these means generate an enormous amount of data. These data are mainly endowed by portable and radio-frequency devices, transportation systems, video surveillance, satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles, and social networking services. This has opened a new avenue of opportunities, to understand and predict urban dynamics in detail, and plan various real-time services and applications in response to that. Over the last decade, certain aspects of the crowd, e.g., mobility, sentimental, size estimation and behavioral, have been analyzed in detail and the outcomes have been reported. This paper mainly conducted an extensive survey on various data sources used for different urban applications, the state-of-the-art on urban data generation techniques and associated processing methods in order to demonstrate their merits and capabilities. Then, available open-access crowd data sets for urban event detection are provided along with relevant application programming interfaces. In addition, an outlook on a support system for urban application is provided which fuses data from all the available pervasive technology sources and finally, some open challenges and promising research directions are outlined

Soil salinity, household wealth and food insecurity in tropical deltas: evidence from south-west coast of Bangladesh

As a creeping process, salinisation represents a significant long-term environmental risk in coastal and deltaic environments. Excess soil salinity may exacerbate existing risks of food insecurity in densely populated tropical deltas, which is likely to have a negative effect on human and ecological sustainability of these regions and beyond. This study focuses on the coastal regions of the Ganges–Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh, and uses data from the 2010 Household Income and Expenditure Survey and the Soil Resource Development Institute to investigate the effect of soil salinity and wealth on household food security. The outcome variables are two widely used measures of food security: calorie availability and household expenditure on food items. The main explanatory variables tested include indicators of soil salinity and household-level socio-economic characteristics. The results of logistic regression show that in unadjusted models, soil salinisation has a significant negative effect on household food security. However, this impact becomes statistically insignificant when households’ wealth is taken into account. The results further suggest that education and remittance flows, but not gender or working status of the household head, are significant predictors of food insecurity in the study area. The findings indicate the need to focus scholarly and policy attention on reducing wealth inequalities in tropical deltas in the context of the global sustainable deltas initiative and the proposed Sustainable Development Goals.ESPA Deltas projectBelmont Forum DELTAS projectESPA – DFIDESRCNER

Soil salinity, household wealth and food insecurity in tropical deltas: evidence from south-west coast of Bangladesh

As a creeping process, salinisation represents a significant long-term environmental risk in coastal and deltaic environments. Excess soil salinity may exacerbate existing risks of food insecurity in densely populated tropical deltas, which is likely to have a negative effect on human and ecological sustainability of these regions and beyond. This study focuses on the coastal regions of the Ganges–Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh, and uses data from the 2010 Household Income and Expenditure Survey and the Soil Resource Development Institute to investigate the effect of soil salinity and wealth on household food security. The outcome variables are two widely used measures of food security: calorie availability and household expenditure on food items. The main explanatory variables tested include indicators of soil salinity and household-level socio-economic characteristics. The results of logistic regression show that in unadjusted models, soil salinisation has a significant negative effect on household food security. However, this impact becomes statistically insignificant when households’ wealth is taken into account. The results further suggest that education and remittance flows, but not gender or working status of the household head, are significant predictors of food insecurity in the study area. The findings indicate the need to focus scholarly and policy attention on reducing wealth inequalities in tropical deltas in the context of the global sustainable deltas initiative and the proposed Sustainable Development Goals.ESPA Deltas projectBelmont Forum DELTAS projectESPA – DFIDESRCNER

Cardiovascular Risk in Women with Diabetes in a Single Centre Study

Background: Among both men and women, diabetes is one of the strongest cardiovascular risk factors. It has been established that type 1 and type 2 diabetes, which both raise the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in women, are more common. Objectives: The aim of the study was to investigate the impact of cardiovascular disease (CVD) Risk in women with diabetes among patients. Methods: This study was a cross-sectional, observational study contained both descriptive and analytical components. The study comprised 160 purposively selected diabetic patients over 45 years old diagnosed from January 2020 to December 2020 in Bangladesh admitted in BIRDEM hospital, Dhaka. After reviewing and rechecking the data, SPSS version 26 was used to do statistical analysis. The level for statistical significance was set at 0.05. Results: Most of the patients belong to 40-49 years age group. Smoke status of the population where 4(2.5%) were current status, 148(92.5%) were never and 8(5.0%) ware former smoker. Most of the patients belong to 148 women of never smoke of this population. Most of the patients belong to 127 women of high-risk of this population. Large scale clinical findings of cardiovascular diseases of the patients Mean±SD HbA1c mmol/mol of 54.6±11.6 and low scale clinical findings of cardiovascular diseases of the patients Mean±SD HDL-c mmol/l of 1.2±0.3. Drugs of the population where 108(67.5%) were Glucose-lowering drugs, 57.5(92.0%) were Lipid-lowering drugs and 108(67.5%) ware Antihypertensive drugs. Most of the patients belong to 108 women using Glucose-lowering drugs and Antihypertensive drugs. Conclusion: The study shows a high prevalence of multiple cardiovascular risk factors among participants with diabete

Impact of climate change on agricultural production and food security: a review on coastal regions of Bangladesh

Bangladesh is severely vulnerable to climate change and its devastation on coastal livelihood and food security has been substantiated. Climate induced hazards will lead to food insecurity directly and indirectly by affecting the coastal biophysical and socioeconomic states. This review article found the potential impacts on coastal agricultural, livestock and fisheries sectors those are the main source of livelihood and food security to coastal people. Furthermore, most of the rural coastal people are hard poor in which women are major in portion and contribute to ensure food security for the entire family. Scrutinizing on ‘vulnerability’ revealed that it is not gender neutral and socio-economically underprivileged groups and marginal people are invaded disproportionately in which women is ranking in the top of the order. Hence, existing gender-poverty nexus along with socio-economic and political aspects make women more endangered to climate vulnerability and food security. It also found that existing policies and adaptation mechanisms failed to address the influence of powers on marginalize women and growing trend of feminization of food insecurity. In addition, also found the necessity for immediate pertinent caucus before the onset of this imminent concernment by aggregating gender and identified vulnerable groups.Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. & Tech. 8 (1): 62-69, June, 201

Evaluation of growth of Chlorella ellipsoidea in different culture media

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the growth of Chlorella ellipsoidea in three different media viz,. medium I (pulse bran), medium II (soil extract) and medium III (inorganic) under the natural environmental conditions. The alga, C. ellipsoidea, reached maximum cell density of 56.32 × 106 cells ml-1 in 10 days in medium I (pulse bran), maximum cell density of 102.99 × 106 cells ml-1 in 11 days in medium II (soil extract) and maximum cell density of 64.23 × 106 cells ml-1 in 12 days in medium III (inorganic medium). The ranges of water temperature, air temperature and light intensity were 22 to 32ºC, 22 to 34ºC and 2.11 to 4.31 (× 103) lux, respectively during the culture period. The average sunshine period was 7.65 ± 1.57 hours. Total alkalinity, free CO2, pH, NO3-N, PO4- P of algal culture medium I, medium II and medium III were 220, 200 and 150 mg L-1 ; 26, 9 and 19 mg L-1; 7.9, 7.6 and 7.5; 45, 45 and 133.33 mg L-1; 10.9, 15.1 and 37.06 mg L-1, respectively. Cell densities of cultures of C. ellipsoidea under three treatments I, II and III, it can be concluded that cell densities under 3 treatments are significantly different (F=39.78) and treatment II (soil extract medium) is the best for algal (C. ellipsoidea) culture among three treatments. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/ijarit.v4i2.22636 Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. & Tech. 4 (2): 6-10, December, 201

Assessment of genetic diversity in French bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L) based on RAPD marker

RAPD molecular markers were used to evaluate the genetic diversity in the fourteen varieties of French bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) of three eco-geographical regions of Bangladesh. Out of the 20 primers only, 6 yielded polymorphic banding patterns. In total, 40 different DNA bands were reproducibly obtained, out of which 28 (70%) were polymorphic. The polymorphisms were scored and used in band-sharing analysis to identify genetic relationships. Cluster analysis based on Jaccard’s similarity coefficient using UPGMA grouped all the 14 genotypes into two major groups. Pair-wise variety comparison of the varieties showed that inter-variety similarity indices for PV004 versus PV005 (98.51) was higher than all other varietals pairs. On the other hand, inter-cultivar similarity index for BARI 01 versus PV009 (59.58) cultivar was lower than all other cultivar pairs. Therefore, the inherent simplicity and efficiency of RAPD analyses will be to facilitate the construction of RAPD-based genetic linkage maps in French bean.Key words: RAPD, French bean, polymorphism

Predicting users’ behavior using mouse movement information: an information foraging theory perspective

The prediction of users’ behavior is essential for keeping useful information on the web. Previous studies have used mouse cursor information in web usability evaluation and designing user-oriented search interfaces. However, we know fairly to a small extent pertaining to user behavior, specifically clicking and navigating behavior, for prolonged search session illustrating sophisticated search norms. In this study, we perform extensive analysis on a mouse movement activities dataset to capture every users’ movement pattern using the effects of information foraging theory (IFT). The mouse cursor movement information dataset includes the timing and positioning information of mouse cursors collected from several users in different sessions. The tasks vary in two dimensions: (1) to determine the interactive elements (i.e., information episodes) of user interaction with the site; (2) adopt these findings to predict users’ behavior by exploiting the LSTM model. Our model is developed to find the main patterns of the user’s movement on the site and simulate the behavior of users’ mouse movement on any website. We validate our approach on a mouse movement dataset with a rich collection of time and position information of mouse pointers in which searchers and websites are annotated by web foragers and information patches, respectively. Our evaluation shows that the proposed IFT-based effects provide an LSTM model a more accurate interpretative exposition of all the patterns in the movement of the users’ mouse cursors across the screen

Sustainable deltas in the Anthropocene

What are the possible trajectories of delta development over the coming decades? Trajectories will be determined by the interactions of biophysical trends such as changing sediment supplies, subsidence due to compaction of sediment and climate change, along with key socio-economic trends of migration and urbanisation, agricultural intensification, demographic transition, economic growth and structural change of the economy. Knowledge and understanding of plausible trajectories can inform management choices for deltas in the Anthropocene, including new policy perspectives and innovative adaptation. The emergence of visionary delta management plans in some large deltas, such as the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100, is an important and necessary component. This chapter synthesises the state of knowledge and highlights key elements of science that will inform decisions on future management of deltas.<br/