Structural Performance of Infilled Steel-Concrete Composite Thin-Walled Columns Combined with FRP and CFRP: A Comprehensive Review.

Fiber addition enhances the composite action between the steel tube and concrete core, increasing the strength of the concrete core. To better understand how fiber-reinforced infilled steel-concrete composite thin-walled columns (SCTWCs) behave, multiple investigations have been conducted using both experimental and analytical methods. This article provides a comprehensive review of SCTWCs' confinement approaches using fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) and carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP). In this research, the behavior and formation of FRP and CFRP wrappings of the SCTWCs are reviewed and discussed. The ability of the FRP to serve as a confining material and reinforcement for the columns has increased its use in columns applications. The FRP can be applied to reinforce the structures from the exterior. By applying the CFRP strips, the columns' load-carrying capacity is improved up to 30% when compared with their corresponding un-strengthened columns. External bonding of the CFRP strips efficiently creates external confinement pressure, prevents local buckling of the steel tubes, and enhances the load-carrying capacity of the SCTWCs. The primary goal is to facilitate a clear understanding of the SCTWCs. This article helps structural researchers and engineers better understand the behavior of the SCTWCs that include the FRP and CFRP composites as external reinforcement. Future research directions are also suggested, which utilize previous research works.

Knowledge, attitude and practice of diabetes among secondary school-going children in Bangladesh.

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a global public health concern. DM has been increasing alarmingly among the young people and childhood-onset has now become an emerging issue worldwide. Unlike other chronic diseases, DM requires constant and active attention of the patients, sometimes of their family members for successful management of this disease. Knowledge, attitude, and practices make significant differences at the population level, which largely depend on socioeconomic status, area of residence, level of education, and other socio-demographic attributes. A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out among secondary school students in grades 6 through 10 attending schools in 18 districts of Bangladesh. A total of 2009 students were enrolled for the study from the selected schools and madrasas from Bengali, English, and Arabic medium. The majority of responders (79.34%) reported that they had heard of diabetes, however, only 45% knew that diabetes can cause blood glucose levels to rise. Among different therapeutic options, only 15% of students had heard the name of metformin, while 56.2% were familiar with insulin. English medium students were significantly more likely to have good knowledge than the Bangla medium students (19.31%, OR: 1. 44; 95% CI: 1.07, 1.95). Respondents of semi-urban (19.66%, OR: 1.7; 95% CI: 1.21, 2.36) and urban (18.47%, OR: 1.48; 95% CI: 1.17, 1.86) areas were more likely to have good knowledge than rural areas. Of the respondents, 20.61% did not know of any diabetic treatment options. Only a small percentage of students (11%) attended any diabetes education classes and 10.7% of students followed any recommended diabetes prevention methods. Knowledge, attitude, and practice related to diabetes were found to have been influenced by socioeconomic factors, societal practices, and behavioral patterns. This is the first nationwide research study in Bangladesh among secondary school students to study knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to diabetes. With a focus on Bangladesh's youthful population, this study sought to provide an informational framework that can be supportive for effective intervention to increase knowledge of diabetes and its implications.

Prevalence and impact of the use of electronic gadgets on the health of children in secondary schools in Bangladesh: A cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Use of technological gadgets has rapidly been increasing among adolescents, which may result in health issues and technology addiction. This study focuses on the prevalence of usage of technological gadgets and health-related complications among secondary school-going children of Bangladesh. METHODS: A total of 1803 secondary school students from 21 different districts of Bangladesh participated in the study. The children were asked questions relating to their access to electronic gadgets, time spent on outdoor activities, and whether they experienced any health-complications as an after-effect of the usage. A binary logistic regression model was adapted considering time spent on gadgets as an independent variable and health problems (physical and mental) as the dependent variable. RESULTS: Among all the gadgets, 67.11% of the participants were reported to use mobile phones on a daily basis. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, 24.48% of respondents used electronic gadgets for attending online classes. The participants were reported to use gadgets significantly more (P < .05) in 2020 as compared to 2019. Children showed less tendency to spend time in outdoor activities. More than 50% of the participants spend time doing outdoor activities for less than 1 hour daily. An association between gadget use and health problems like headache, backache, visual disturbance, and sleeping disturbance has been observed in our study. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates that different socio-demographic factors have influence on the use of gadgets by children, and this use has greatly been affecting both the physical and mental health of the secondary school-going students of Bangladesh.

Global and local mutations in Bangladeshi SARS-CoV-2 genomes.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) warrants comprehensive investigations of publicly available Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) genomes to gain new insight about their epidemiology, mutations, and pathogenesis. Nearly 0.4 million mutations have been identified so far among the ∼60,000 SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences. In this study, we compared a total of 371 SARS-CoV-2 published whole genomes reported from different parts of Bangladesh with 467 sequences reported globally to understand the origin of viruses, possible patterns of mutations, and availability of unique mutations. Phylogenetic analyses indicated that SARS-CoV-2 viruses might have transmitted through infected travelers from European countries, and the GR clade was found as predominant in Bangladesh. Our analyses revealed 4604 mutations at the RNA level including 2862 missense mutations, 1192 synonymous mutations, 25 insertions and deletions and 525 other types of mutation. In line with the global trend, D614G mutation in spike glycoprotein was predominantly high (98 %) in Bangladeshi isolates. Interestingly, we found the average number of mutations in ORF1ab, S, ORF3a, M, and N were significantly higher (p < 0.001) for sequences containing the G614 variant compared to those having D614. Previously reported frequent mutations, such as R203K, D614G, G204R, P4715L and I300F at protein levels were also prevalent in Bangladeshi isolates. Additionally, 34 unique amino acid changes were revealed and categorized as originating from different cities. These analyses may increase our understanding of variations in SARS-CoV-2 virus genomes, circulating in Bangladesh and elsewhere.

Implementation of Q learning and deep Q network for controlling a self balancing robot model.

In this paper, the implementations of two reinforcement learnings namely, Q learning and deep Q network (DQN) on the Gazebo model of a self balancing robot have been discussed. The goal of the experiments is to make the robot model learn the best actions for staying balanced in an environment. The more time it can remain within a specified limit, the more reward it accumulates and hence more balanced it is. We did various tests with many hyperparameters and demonstrated the performance curves.

Seroepidemiological studies for toxoplasmosis among out- and inpatients in Benha University Hospitals, Qualyobia Governorate.

Toxoplasma antibodies were detected in sera of 700 cases; 500 were collected randomly from individuals attending the outpatient clinics of Benha University Hospitals of different ages and sexes and 200 from suspected inpatients from Obstetric, Opthalmology, Internal Medicine and Surgery Departments. The indirect fluorescent antibody technique was performed. The results were correlated with the clinical picture, age, sex and residence. The general positivity rate was 14.57%; in the random group, 11.2% and in suspected group, 23% (P < 0.001). Toxoplasma antibodies were more in females than in males in random group especially above 40 years old but with no obvious difference in rural and urban areas. In the suspected group, Toxoplasma positivity were 24% in Obstetric cases; 15% in hepatosplenomegalic cases, 17.5% in prolonged fever cases, 28.57% in ophthalmic cases and 40% in localised lymphadenopathy cases.