Bangladesh National University

The manuscript aimed at delineating the importance of introducing phonetics and phonology in the ESL syllabus of primary and secondary level studies in Bangladesh so that learners of all levels could reduce Bengali's impact on English pronunciation. In terms of English as Lingua Franca (ELF), every mother tongue plays interference with English as a Second Language (ESL) pronunciation in each geographical community. In this respect, pronouncing English like the natives is a big challenge for non-native speakers around the world. The scenarios seem all alike in Bangladesh, where a major part of its teachers and learners of the English language cannot pronounce English with IPA standard like the native English speakers. Their excessive mother tongue-centred attitudes appear as hindrances on the way to standard accents. Thus, the learners of Bangladesh have been lagging behind the international communications. The research work was conducted in mixed method type where quantitative was predominating to make the article reliable. Tow data collection tools: questionnaire survey and content analysis were used in this study. The author hoped to conclude by showing that the study of phonetics and phonology at the elementary and secondary levels of ESL may be a more effective strategy to lessen Bengali interference in ESL pronunciation and that Bangladeshi students might be able to speak IPA standard ESL pronunciation. Similarly, if any country used the terminology mentioned above at the same levels of education, they might be able to lessen the influence of their native tongue on their pronunciation of ESL and use the IPA standard.

This study evaluated the effects of different parts of M. paniculata (MP) extracts on convulsions and antioxidant activities in mice. Six polyphenolic compounds were identified, where epicatechin and quercetin have been identified in the highest amounts (23.01 and 32.23 mg/100 g of dry MP extract, respectively) in MP leaf and stem extracts, using Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography. 7-day oral administration of MP at doses of 100, 200, and 400 mg/kg body weight (BW) significantly reduced convulsions and reduced mortality rates compared with seizure inducer groups. Antioxidant potentials were measured by superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), and reduced glutathione (GSH) content in whole-brain homogenates. Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) levels significantly increased in leaves and stem-treated groups, suggesting that MP leaves and stems have potent antioxidant properties that can attenuate convulsions by modulating the GABAergic system and antioxidant activities.

Petroleum ether (PE), chloroform (CHCl3), and methanol (CH3OH) extracts of the whole chickpea plant Cicer arietinum (L.) have been tested against adult beetles of Callosobruchus chinensis (L.), Sitophilus oryzae (L.) and Tribolium castaneum (Herbst) through dose-mortality and repellent activity tests. In dose mortality tests, the PE extracts of C. arietinum gave LD50 values of 3.466, 3.292, 2.721, 2.398, 1.887, 1.663 and 1.428 mg/cm2 against C. chinensis and 4.297, 3.415, 2.246, 1.725, 1.384, 0.984 and 0.722 mg/cm2 against S. oryzae both after 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42 and 48 h of exposures, respectively. The CHCl3 extracts gave LD50 values of 5.242, 4.844, 3.472, 2.945, 2.540, 1.875, 1.295 and 1.053 mg/cm2 against C. chinensis after 6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42 and 48 h of exposures, respectively. The CH3OH extracts, on the other hand, yielded LD50 values of 0.923, 0.757, 0.649, 0.515, 0.400, 0.303, 0.247 and 0.197 mg/cm2 against C. chinensis, 4.227, 3.528, 3.454, 2.933, 2.493, 2.187, 1.938 and 1.724 mg/cm2 against S. oryzae and 3.485, 3.176, 2.851, 1.531, 1.113, 0.756, 0.534 and 0.478 mg/cm2 against T. castaneum adults after 6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42 and 48 h of exposures, respectively. However, the PE extracts of C. arietinum did not show any mortality against T. castaneum and the CHCl3 extracts were inactive against S. oryzae and T. castaneum adults. In repellency tests, all three organic extracts did not show any repellency against the test beetles. According to their intensity of activities, the extracts could be arranged in the following descending order: CH3OH extracts against C. chinensis > CH3OH extracts against T. castaneum > PE extracts against S. oryzae > CHCl3 extracts against C. chinensis > PE extracts against C. chinensis > CH3OH extracts against S. oryzae adults. The present results indicate that the test plant C. arietinum contains bioactive compounds and could be used as a source of control agents for the stored product pests. J Bio-Sci. 30(1): 91-100, 2022 (June)

In Bangladesh the communicative syllabus at S.S.C. and H.S.C. levels was introduced in the 90s of the last century. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is deemed to be the most successful method of teaching and learning English as a second or foreign language (SFL). But, if we look into the effectiveness of CLT in the implementation level, most possibly it will lead us to a big question mark. The article aims at finding out the effectiveness of introducing CLT in the S.S.C. and H.S.C. levels to see whether our students are really achieving competence in the target language or not. So, the authors initiated to carry out a survey on the teachers and the students of the classes IX & X, XI & XII and selected Fakirhat, one of the southern Upazillas of Bangladesh under Bagerhat district, as the study area for the survey. The study includes the students and the teachers of government and non-government schools, colleges and madrasas to unearth the problems the learners and the teachers usually face in practicing CLT. Besides, it attempts to indicate the impact of effectiveness and ineffectiveness of CLT on the learners and on our society as well. The authors have also suggested some corrective measures for maximizing the effectiveness of CLT in Bangladesh. Maximization of the effectiveness of CLT will result in quality products having excellent communicative competence. If it is done, only then we can hope that the nation will be benefited both locally and globally.

There has been a tremendous increase in internet users and enough bandwidth in recent years. Because Internet connectivity is so inexpensive, information sharing (text, audio, and video) has become more popular and faster. This video content must be examined in order to classify it for different purposes for users. Several machine learning approaches for video classification have been developed to save users time and energy. The use of deep neural networks to recognize human behavior has become a popular issue in recent years. Although significant progress has been made in the field of video recognition, there are still numerous challenges in the realm of video to be overcome. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are well-known for requiring a fixed-size image input, which limits the network topology and reduces identification accuracy. Despite the fact that this problem has been solved in the world of photos, it has yet to be solved in the area of video. We present a ten stacked three-dimensional (3D) convolutional network based on the spatial pyramid-based pooling to handle the input problem of fixed size video frames in video recognition. The network structure is made up of three sections, as the name suggests: a ten-layer stacked 3DCNN, DenseNet, and SPPNet. A KTH dataset was used to test our algorithms. The experimental findings showed that our model outperformed existing models in the area of video-based behavior identification by 2% margin accuracy.

The recent pandemics caused by coronavirus infections have become major challenges in 21st century human health. Scientists are struggling hard to develop a complete cure for infectious diseases, for example, drugs or vaccines against these deadly infectious diseases. We have searched papers on thymoquinone (TQ) and its effects on different infectious diseases in databases like Pubmed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar, and reviewed them in this study. To date research suggests that natural products may become a potential therapeutic option for their prodigious anti-viral or anti-microbial effects on infectious diseases. TQ, a natural phytochemical from black seeds, is known for its health-beneficial activities against several diseases, including infections. It is evident from different in vitro and in vivo studies that TQ is effective against tuberculosis, influenza, dengue, Ebola, Zika, hepatitis, malaria, HIV, and even recent pandemics caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome of coronaviruses (SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2). In these cases, the molecular mechanism of TQ is partly clear but mostly obscure. In this review article, we have discussed the role of TQ against different infectious diseases, including COVID-19, and also critically reviewed the future use of TQ use to fight against infectious diseases.

With global expansion of vector borne diseases, dengue has emerged as a big health crisis and social problem in recent years in Bangladesh. Despite its endemicity since 2000, very few studies were conducted outside of the Capital Dhaka city regarding vector breeding status. Within this dark situation, the year 2019 reported the ever highest number of dengue cases of 101,354. Of them about 50% were from out of Dhaka. To reduce this burden, keeping the vector population density under threshold level is must. In the present entomological study, 100 houses were checked randomly from five areas of Gazipur City Corporation (GCC) during the month of September in 2019. Both of the Aedes vectors were found in all areas, but Aedes aegypti population was dominant. Rooftop garden and under construction site were identified as the most important vector breeding sites. Highly urbanized area (SA2) produced the highest and suburban area (SA4) produced the lowest Breteau Index (BI) of 110 and 15 respectively. The overall House Index (HI) and Breteau Index (BI) of the study areas were 16 and 49 respectively. Four kinds of containers, namely; cemented tank, drum, big earthen pot (chari) and buckets contained about 80 percent of immature Aedes and identified as key container among the positive containers. The Said study has identified comparatively higher number of Ae. aegypti breeding, which is potential for triggering any major outbreak. Further, large-scale surveillance in all administrative wards with a larger sample may indicate the real picture of vector infestation situation throughout the municipality. Bangladesh J. Zool. 49(1): 69-82, 2021

In line with the global goals for sustainable development (SDG goals), UNWTO has emphasized sustainable tourism development for achieving SDGs targets in the member countries. Bangladesh has already identified tourism as a thrust sector for the development of the country. The present study identifies the opportunities and contributions of tourism activities for achieving SDGs in Bangladesh. This study analyses the existing tourism policies and plans, government regulations, reports, and SDG related practices to attain the objectives. It is observed that SDG goals number 8, 12, and 14 are directly related to tourism. Furthermore, tourism can contribute to achieving some other SDG goals, like 3, 11, and 15. The study reveals that the contributions of tourism to GDP and employment are in an increasing trend. Sustainable Consumption and Production practices are encouraging the tourism businesses to include nature and biodiversity conservation in their management plans. Marine tourism development in the Bay-of-Bengal can play a positive role in reducing the negative impact of climate change and sustainable use of the oceans, seas, and marine resources. The study reveals that sustainable tourism development through cultural, religious, and archeological features can make Dhaka a stable and sustainable city. The study shows that sustainable tourism development in protected areas can ensure the preservation of forest areas, protect biodiversity conservation and provide sustainable use of natural resources. Sustainable tourism development can ensure long-term social, economic, and environmental benefits to all stakeholders to contribute a sustainable development in Bangladesh.