scholarly journals Computational Design Approach to Re-Establish the Urban Fabric of Mongla: A Perspective from Grasshopper

Author(s):  
Sumaiya Binte Azad

The Padma Multipurpose Bridge Project is the genesis of some subsequent projects in Bangladesh among which developing Mongla Port is one of the priority values. Since Mongla is an integral part of southern Bangladesh, the government has taken initiatives to integrate the port uses for neighboring countries. An agreement was signed (Intra Bangladesh, Butan, India, and Nepal (BBIN) Trade) for offering multi‐modal transit access to India and Port access to Nepal, Bhutan and Eastern India. The objective of this study is to establish a computational way to analyze the existing fabric and restore a potential optimized fabric. The methodology of this study includes developing a computational approach, collecting data from secondary sources, analyzing the data set and adjusting it to the identified existing urban fabric. In this paper, a new tool is introduced named ‘Physarealm’, based on the algorithm of Grasshopper and Rhinoceros.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1351010X2098690
Author(s):  
Romana Rust ◽  
Achilleas Xydis ◽  
Kurt Heutschi ◽  
Nathanael Perraudin ◽  
Gonzalo Casas ◽  
...  

In this paper, we present a novel interdisciplinary approach to study the relationship between diffusive surface structures and their acoustic performance. Using computational design, surface structures are iteratively generated and 3D printed at 1:10 model scale. They originate from different fabrication typologies and are designed to have acoustic diffusion and absorption effects. An automated robotic process measures the impulse responses of these surfaces by positioning a microphone and a speaker at multiple locations. The collected data serves two purposes: first, as an exploratory catalogue of different spatio-temporal-acoustic scenarios and second, as data set for predicting the acoustic response of digitally designed surface geometries using machine learning. In this paper, we present the automated data acquisition setup, the data processing and the computational generation of diffusive surface structures. We describe first results of comparative studies of measured surface panels and conclude with steps of future research.


Author(s):  
Shamim Ferdous ◽  
Mohammad Deloar Hossain

Children with disabilities (CWDs) are one of the most marginalised and excluded groups in the society. Facing daily discrimination in the form of negative attitudes, lack of adequate policies and legislation, they are effectively barred from realising their rights to healthcare, education and even survival. It has been estimated that exposure towards all forms of violence against CWDs is four-time greater than that of children without disabilities. Bangladesh has an estimated 7–10 million CWDs (out of a total of 72 million children, World Health Organisation Report). Most of the time, these children are treated as a burden to their families or the community and thus become subject to violence. There are very few specialised institutions with residential facility to take care of them. So, they are institutionalised in general residential institutions at a significantly higher rate than other children. But both the special and general residential institutions have lack of skilled human resources and knowledge of the special situation and needs of CWDs. Peer groups of the CWDs are also less sensitised, which result in further stigma and discrimination of CWDs. A 2010 study was done by the Ministry of Women and children Affairs. The findings from interviews with adolescents’ aged 13–16 in 12 locations of Dhaka City revealed their extreme vulnerability. In 2010, a study by Bangladesh Protibondhi Foundation that conducted a survey supported by the Save the Children Sweden–Denmark found that 51.4% of CWDs are either at risk of sexual abuse (12.5%) or have been sexually abused (38.9%).The government of Bangladesh has taken a number of legislative and policy steps that indicate commitment to advancing the rights of persons with disabilities. In terms of international instruments, Department of Social Services under Ministry of Social Welfare operates various types of institutions for the children and also CWDs. The study will adopt qualitative and quantitative methods to collect information from both primary and secondary sources and also assess the situation of government non-government organisations/religious institutions where CWDs have residential facilities in order to understand which factors contribute to increased vulnerability of these children.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruchi Mittal ◽  
Wasim Ahmed ◽  
Amit Mittal ◽  
Ishan Aggarwal

Purpose Using data from Twitter, the purpose of this paper is to assess the coping behaviour and reactions of social media users in response to the initial days of the COVID-19-related lockdown in different parts of the world. Design/methodology/approach This study follows the quasi-inductive approach which allows the development of pre-categories from other theories before the sampling and coding processes begin, for use in those processes. Data was extracted using relevant keywords from Twitter, and a sample was drawn from the Twitter data set to ensure the data is more manageable from a qualitative research standpoint and that meaningful interpretations can be drawn from the data analysis results. The data analysis is discussed in two parts: extraction and classification of data from Twitter using automated sentiment analysis; and qualitative data analysis of a smaller Twitter data sample. Findings This study found that during the lockdown the majority of users on Twitter shared positive opinions towards the lockdown. The results also found that people are keeping themselves engaged and entertained. Governments around the world have also gained support from Twitter users. This is despite the hardships being faced by citizens. The authors also found a number of users expressing negative sentiments. The results also found that several users on Twitter were fence-sitters and their opinions and emotions could swing either way depending on how the pandemic progresses and what action is taken by governments around the world. Research limitations/implications The authors add to the body of literature that has examined Twitter discussions around H1N1 using in-depth qualitative methods and conspiracy theories around COVID-19. In the long run, the government can help citizens develop routines that help the community adapt to a new dangerous environment – this has very effectively been shown in the context of wildfires in the context of disaster management. In the context of this research, the dominance of the positive themes within tweets is promising for policymakers and governments around the world. However, sentiments may wish to be monitored going forward as large-spikes in negative sentiment may highlight lockdown-fatigue. Social implications The psychology of humans during a pandemic can have a profound impact on how COVID-19 shapes up, and this shall also include how people behave with other people and with the larger environment. Lockdowns are the opposite of what societies strive to achieve, i.e. socializing. Originality/value This study is based on original Twitter data collected during the initial days of the COVID-19-induced lockdown. The topic of “lockdowns” and the “COVID-19” pandemic have not been studied together thus far. This study is highly topical.


Unity Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 251-262
Author(s):  
Sumitra Karki

Nepal has been a home to diversified settlement in terms of ethnicity, religion, dialect and culture since its outset in civilization. It also lies between two great military and economic giants of Asia – India and China – that are hostile to each other. While these bring abundant opportunities for Nepal, it possesses several internal and external security threats. Nepal suffers from cyber-attack, environmental degradation, pandemic, ethnic, racial or religious conflicts, inequality and poverty, extremism, human trafficking, corruption, migration and trans-boundary crime. In addition, Nepal also faces several security threats, traditional and non–traditional, including terrorism and insurgency. These threats possess serious implications on peace and security of Nepal and the South Asian region. There is a need of serious study about the major internal and external security challenges that Nepal faces in recent decades. This study aims at examining some of the major security challenges, explore the factors behind it, and attempt to suggest few policy recommendations to the government of Nepal to deal with them. The study is conducted by reviewing the primary and secondary sources of data. The primary data includes documents of the government agencies, press release, joint statement and organizational reports. It also includes the interviews with security experts, bureaucrats, policy makers and academicians. Similarly, secondary data includes books, news reports, academic journals, seminars report and reports of research institutes and think tanks. The study highlights that Nepal should prepare itself to meet with the emerging internal and external security challenges what have emerged in recent times. With the rise of India and China, two adversarial powers in the region, Nepal possess extreme challenges in days to come. Similarly, hardly any countries of the world had prepared itself to deal with recent pandemic like COVID-19 that has shattered even the most powerful countries of the world. Taking lessons from these, it is time for Nepal to learn and prepare to mitigate the challenges.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (11n12) ◽  
pp. 1759-1777
Author(s):  
Jialing Liang ◽  
Peiquan Jin ◽  
Lin Mu ◽  
Jie Zhao

With the development of Web 2.0, social media such as Twitter and Sina Weibo have become an essential platform for disseminating hot events. Simultaneously, due to the free policy of microblogging services, users can post user-generated content freely on microblogging platforms. Accordingly, more and more hot events on microblogging platforms have been labeled as spammers. Spammers will not only hurt the healthy development of social media but also introduce many economic and social problems. Therefore, the government and enterprises must distinguish whether a hot event on microblogging platforms is a spammer or is a naturally-developing event. In this paper, we focus on the hot event list on Sina Weibo and collect the relevant microblogs of each hot event to study the detecting methods of spammers. Notably, we develop an integral feature set consisting of user profile, user behavior, and user relationships to reflect various factors affecting the detection of spammers. Then, we employ typical machine learning methods to conduct extensive experiments on detecting spammers. We use a real data set crawled from the most prominent Chinese microblogging platform, Sina Weibo, and evaluate the performance of 10 machine learning models with five sampling methods. The results in terms of various metrics show that the Random Forest model and the over-sampling method achieve the best accuracy in detecting spammers and non-spammers.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Md. Bayezid Alam ◽  
Zhiyong Zhu

PurposeThis study explores the development trajectory of private tutoring in Bangladesh. Specifically, it illustrates how private tutoring has emerged and expanded in the country's education system and examines how governments have responded on this issue.Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopted a case study methodology for this study. Data were gathered from different secondary sources such as books, official documents, scholarly articles, and newspaper reports. The data analysis process consists of three-phases of activities: data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification.FindingsPrivate tutoring historically existed in Bangladesh. It is rapidly expanded in the country's education system – from primary to higher secondary level. Currently, it has reached an industrialization stage, where commercial coaching has become a major type of tutoring. The expansion of private tutoring is the inevitable result of the continued privatization and marketization of education. To bring the private tutoring under a framework, the government has taken some regulatory measures that can be characterized as “laissez-faire.” The existing measures are largely ineffective, as the policy makers followed an “top-down” approach when framing the policies.Originality/valueThis study, to the best of the authors' knowledge, is the first to target the historical aspects of private tutoring in Bangladesh. It has potential to fill out the literature gap on private tutoring by analyzing its policy aspect.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keratilwe Bodilenyane ◽  
Baakile Motshegwa

AbstractThe purpose of this research paper was to explore how HIV/AIDS manipulate nurses’ perception of their workload and pay in the era of HIV/AIDS in Gaborone and the surrounding areas of Botswana. The health care sector in Botswana is overwhelmed by HIV/AIDS, and this takes a toll on the nurses because they are the ones at the forefront in the fight against this demanding and risky illness at the workplace. The focus in this study was on the workload and pay in the era of HIV/AIDS. The general picture that emerges from the current study is that nurses are dissatisfied with their pay and to some extent the workload and this supports some of the earlier studies which reinforce their importance in the workplace. The study used both primary and secondary sources of information. For the purpose of this study convenience sampling was used. A questionnaire was used for data collection. The study adapted Index of Organizational Reactions (IOR). The findings of the current study will help the government to design strategies that will increase the level of job satisfaction among the nurses in the public health care sector of Botswana.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 56
Author(s):  
Oyediran, Leye Sherifdeen ◽  
Sanni, Ibrahim ◽  
Adedoyin, Lukman ◽  
Oyewole Olabode Michael

The need to better the lots of citizens through government expenditure has raised questions on the impact of government expenditure on the economic development and growth of nations. It is against this background that this paper examined the antecedent effect of government spending on the Nigerian economic growth. The general objective of the study is to ascertain the relationship between government expenditure and economic growth in Nigeria; specifically, the study examined: (i) the significance influence of government capital expenditure on economic growth in Nigeria and (ii) the significance influence of government recurrent expenditure on economic growth in Nigeria. The study employed ordinary least square (OLS) multiple regression analysis in estimating the specified model, with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the dependent variable, while Capital Expenditure (CAPEXP) and Recurrent Expenditure (REXP) are the independent variables. Data between 1980 – 2013 were collected from secondary sources through the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Results showed that in Nigeria, there exist a significant relationship between the government expenditure and economic growth. The study therefore recommends instilling fiscal discipline in government expenditures, and putting in place structural mechanisms to act as surveillance on capital spending so as to boost the nation’s human and social capital.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 67-75
Author(s):  
Muhammad Abdullahi Maigari ◽  
Uthman Abdullahi Abdul-Qadir

This paper examines the abduction of the schoolgirls in Chibok Local Government Area of Borno State, Nigeria in 2014. The paper examined how the abduction of the schoolgirls generated responses and support for the rescue of the abducted girls from people and organization from different parts of the globe. The Islamists terrorist organization operating in Borno State has attracted the attention of the world since 2009 when they started attacking government establishments and security installations northeast which later escalated to major cities in Northern Nigeria. Methodologically, the paper utilized secondary sources of data to analyze the phenomenon studied. The paper revealed that the development and innovations in information and communication technology which dismantled traditional and colonial boundaries enabled people to express support, solidarity and assist victims of conflict who resides millions of Kilometers away. This shows that Internet-based communications technology has reduced the distance of time and space that characterised traditional mass media. The campaign for the release of the schoolgirls on the social media platforms particularly Twitter and Facebook has tremendously contributed to the release of some of them. Furthermore, the girls freed from abduction have received proper attention: education and reintegration programmes which enable them to start post-abduction life. In this regard, social media has become a tool for supporting the government in moments of security challenges which the Bring Back Our Girls campaign attracted foreign and domestic assistance to Nigeria in the search of the abducted girls and the fight against the Islamist insurgents.


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