Showing papers by "International Islamic University, Chittagong published in 2016"

IoT based autonomous percipient irrigation system using raspberry Pi

Abstract: This paper propounds a design for automatic water supplying system in farmland using raspberry pi 3, Arduino microcontrollers, WiFi module, GSM shield, relay boards and couple of sensors. The components we used in our system ensures overall fecund, scalable and spirited implementation. Depending upon the moisture level of farmland and daylight intensity, the system can detect the appropriate time of water supply in the trees and can also keep track of the water level to prevent water from being accumulated around the roots of the saplings. The analog data received from the sensors are transmitted by Arduino as digital signal via Wifi Module to the Raspberry Pi 3. The system is able to notify the administrator if water shortage arises in the main water supply and an administrator can also communicate with the system by sending SMS (Short message service) of a particular keyword. This system can be applied in farmland as well as small pot plants. Using this system, a very promising outcome is found in sustaining and cherishing the plants in a more scientific way.

First‐principles prediction of mechanical and bonding characteristics of new T2 superconductor Ta5GeB2

Abstract: In the present paper, density functional theory (DFT) based first-principles methods are applied to investigate the mechanical and bonding properties of the newly synthesized T2 phase superconductor Ta5GeB2 for the first time. The calculated lattice constants are in reasonable agreement with the experiment. The elastic constants (Cij), bulk modulus (B), shear modulus (G), Young's modulus (Y), Poisson's ratio (v), Pugh ratio (G/B), and elastic anisotropy factor A of Ta5GeB2 are calculated and used to explore the mechanical behavior of the compound. To give an explanation of the bonding nature of this new ternary tetragonal system, the band structure, density of states, and Mulliken atomic population are investigated. The estimated Debye temperature and Vickers hardness are also used to justify both the mechanical and bonding properties of Ta5GeB2.

Anthelmintic activity of silver-extract nanoparticles synthesized from the combination of silver nanoparticles and M. charantia fruit extract.

Abstract: Present study has been conducted to know the anthelmintic activity of polyaniline coated silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) synthesized from Momordica charantia fruit extract. By reduction of AgNO3 in presence of NaBH4, silver nanoparticles were prepared. After mixing silver nanoparticles and extracts, coating was given on nanoparticles using polyaniline. Prepared nanoparticles were characterized by Visual, UV, FTIR spectroscopy, SEM techniques, and TEM analysis. The FTIR results implied that AgNPs were successfully synthesized and capped with bio-compounds present in the extract. The result showed that death times of worm were 35.12 ± 0.5 and 59.3 ± 0.3 minutes for M. charantia extract and Ag-nanoparticles individually. But when these two combined together, paralysis and death time fall drastically which were only 6.16 ± 0.6 and 9.1 ± 0.4 minutes respectively. Albendazole tablet was used as standard, which made worms death in 3.66 ± 0.1 minutes. Ag-Extract NPs showed strong anthelmintic activity against worm. This study has paved the way for further research to design new anthelmintic drug from the combination of M. charantia and AgNPs.

Hand sign language recognition for Bangla alphabet using Support Vector Machine

Abstract: The sign language considered as the main language for deaf and dumb people. So, a translator is needed when a normal person wants to talk with a deaf or dumb person. In this paper, we present a framework for recognizing Bangla Sign Language (BSL) using Support Vector Machine. The Bangla hand sign alphabets for both vowels and consonants have been used to train and test the recognition system. Bangla sign alphabets are recognized by analyzing its shape and comparing its features that differentiates each sign. In proposed system, hand signs are first converted to HSV color space from RGB image. Then Gabor filters are used to acquire desired hand sign features. Since feature vector obtained using Gabor filter is in a high dimension, to reduce the dimensionality a nonlinear dimensionality reduction technique that is Kernel PCA has been used. Lastly, Support Vector Machine (SVM) is employed for classification of candidate features. The experimental results show that our proposed method outperforms the existing work on Bengali hand sign recognition.

The role of human resource management practices in bank performance

Abstract: This paper examines bank performance using a data envelopment analysis that includes human resource management (HRM) practices as a quality component. The proposed methodology, which investigates the direct impact of HRM practices on traditional bank performance measurement, is applied for the first time to the banking sector. The performance scores are then decomposed into four efficiency scores using the Malmquist index. For empirical results, panel data of 48 banks are taken from Bangladesh over the period of 2004–2013. The results state that foreign banks are still in the queue to achieve the scale efficiency comparable to that of local banks. However, considering HRM practices as quality indicator, foreign banks progressed by 2.6% annually, whereas local banks regressed with a yearly value of 17.1% over the study period. Thus, the results show that, while local banks possess an acceptable level of performance in terms of their operations, their HRM practices must be improved in order to deal with bot...

An ab initio investigation of vibrational, thermodynamic, and optical properties of Sc 2 AlC MAX compound

Abstract: The structural vibrational, thermodynamical, and optical properties of potentially technologically important, weakly coupled MAX compound, Sc2AlC are calculated using density functional theory (DFT). The structural properties of Sc2AlC are compared with the results reported earlier. The vibrational, thermodynamical, and optical properties are theoretically estimated for the first time. The phonon dispersion curve is calculated and the dynamical stability of this compound is investigated. The optical and acoustic modes are observed clearly. We calculate the Helmholtz free energy (F), internal energy (E), entropy (S), and specific heat capacity (Cv ) from the phonon density of states. Various optical parameters are also calculated. The reflectance spectrum shows that this compound has the potential to be used as an efficient solar reflector.

Random forests based recognition of human activities and postural transitions on smartphone

Abstract: Postural transitions are transitory movements with limited duration bounded by two physical activities, which represent the transition between two activities. Recognition of postural transitions is a challenging task due to low occurrence rate of transitions and short duration than physical activities. Postural transitions may decrease recognition accuracy when postural transitions are unspecified in the recognition system. This paper deals with the occurrence of postural transitions during activity performance. Hence, this paper proposes importance score driven random forests to recognize activities and postural transitions on the smartphone. The proposed model first selects relevant features rely on the relative importance of features, and then feed selected features to random forests. This model shows 100% recognition accuracy on a benchmark dataset and indicates that features created from accelerometer signals are more relevant for recognition than features created from gyroscope signals.

Combining a rule-based classifier with ensemble of feature sets and machine learning techniques for sentiment analysis on microblog

Abstract: Microblog, especially Twitter, have become an integral part of our daily life, where millions of users sharing their thoughts daily because of its short length characteristics and simple manner of expression. Monitoring and analyzing sentiments from such massive Twitter posts provide enormous opportunities for companies and other organizations to estimate the user acceptance of their products and services. But the ever-growing unstructured and informal user-generated posts in Twitter demands sentiment analysis tools that can automatically infer sentiments from Twitter posts. In this paper, we propose an approach for sentiment analysis on Twitter, where we combine a rule-based classifier with a majority voting based ensemble of supervised classifiers. We introduce a set of rules for the rule-based classifier based on the occurrences of emoticons and sentiment-bearing words. To train the supervised classifiers, we extract a set of features grouped into Twitter specific features, textual features, parts-of-speech (POS) features, lexicon based features, and bag-of-words (BoW) feature. A supervised feature selection method based on the chi-square statistics (χ2) and information gain (IG) is applied to select the best feature combination. We conducted our experiments on Stanford sentiment140 dataset. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method over the baseline and known related work.

Modelling and simulation of power system of battery, solar and fuel cell powered Hybrid Electric vehicle

Abstract: To meet the never ending fuel demand of the vehicle, Hybrid Vehicle was introduced in the research. Generally a hybrid vehicle is the combination of an internal combustion engine (ICE) and electrical drive system. The performance of the vehicle is largely dependent on the accuracy and efficiency of the electrical system of the vehicle powertrain. This paper analyzed an electrical system for the powertrain of Hybrid Electric vehicle which is powered by Fuel cell, Battery and PV panel. A Simulink model is prepared and simulated successfully. Permanent magnet synchronous motor drive system is used in the Simulink model. The simulation results like rotor speed, electromagnetic torque, current, DC-DC converter current, voltage, state of charging, grid charger performance, photovoltaic panel performance and mechanical torque are discussed and compared with the state of the art methods. Including this the research also compared the performance of energy storage system with the reference which is frequently used in the electrical system of the HEV.

Characterization and evaluation of antibacterial and antiproliferative activities of crude protein extracts isolated from the seed of Ricinus communis in Bangladesh.

Abstract: Ricinus communis (Euphorbiaceae) has previously been reported to possess analgesic, antihistamine, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. This study was designed for isolation, characterization and evaluation of antibacterial and anti-proliferative activities of R. communis seed protein. The concentration and molecular weight of R. communis seed protein were estimated by SDS-PAGE and spectrophotometric analysis, respectively. Lectin activity was evaluated by hemagglutination assay on mice blood. In vitro susceptibility of four human pathogenic bacteria including Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Enterobacter aerogenes and Staphylococcus aureus was detected using disk diffusion assay, and minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) value was determined using micro-dilution method. A total of twenty four Swiss albino mice containing Ehrlich’s ascites carcinoma (EAC) cells were treated with the crude protein of R. communis at 50 and 100 μg/ml/d/mouse for 6 days. Growth inhibitory activity of R. communis seed protein on EAC cells was determined by haemocytometer counting using trypan blue dye and DAPI (4΄,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole) staining was used to assess apoptotic cells. The protein concentration of six R. communis (castor) varieties ranged between 21–35 mg/ml and molecular weight between 14–200 kDa. Castor protein agglutinated mice blood at 3.125 μg/wall. The seed protein shows considerable antimicrobial activity against E. coli, P. aeruginosa and S. aureus, exhibiting MIC values of 250, 125 and 62.5 μg/ml, respectively. Administration of seed protein led to 54 % growth inhibition of EAC cells at 100 μg/ml. DAPI staining indicates marked features of apoptosis including condensation of cytoplasm, nuclear fragmentation and aggregation of apoptotic bodies etc. Our study suggests that the lectin rich R. communis seed protein has strong antibacterial and anticancer activities.

Predicting mobile banking adoption in Bangladesh: a neural network approach

Abstract: Rapid development in technology amplifies the need of examining technology adoption. Financial sectors, nowadays, are providing a long list of both financial and nonfinancial services to attract th...

Structural, elastic, electronic and optical properties of Cu3MTe4 (M = Nb, Ta) sulvanites — An ab initio study

Abstract: The elastic, electronic, and optical properties of Cu3MTe4 (M = Nb, Ta) are investigated for the first time using the density-functional formalism. The optimized crystal structure is obtained and the lattice parameters are compared with available experimental data. Different elastic moduli are calculated. The Born criteria for mechanicalstability are found to be fulfilled from the estimated values of the elastic moduli, Cij . The band structure and the electronic energy density of states (EDOS) are also determined. The band structure calculations show semiconducting behavior for both the compounds. The theoretically calculated values of the band gaps are found to be strongly dependent on the nature of the functional representing the exchange correlations. Technologically significant optical parameters (e.g., dielectric function, refractive index, absorption coefficient, optical conductivity, reflectivity, and loss function) have been determined. Important conclusions are drawn based on the theoretical findings.

Sentiment analysis of students feedback: A study towards optimal tools

Abstract: Educational Institutions attempts to gather feedback from students' to study their sentiments towards courses and instructors and to enhance the performance of the instructors. Basically, such feedbacks are gathered at the end of the semester with the use of survey forms. However, this technique is very tedious, slow and time consuming. With the advent of social media, especially Facebook, the collection of feedback become easier through Facebook pages and groups. But, analyzing those feedbacks is equally challenging. This paper addresses those problems and uncovers the best model for analyzing those feedbacks with the use of machine learning techniques such as Support Vector Machines (SVM), Maximum Entropy (ME), Naive Bayes (NB), and Complement Naive Bayes (CNB) and applying neutral class. And, found SVM as the highest performer with an accuracy of 97% by applying different preprocessing and feature extraction techniques and avoiding neutral class, which outperform state-of-art work by 2%.

First-principles study of SnO under high pressure

Abstract: This paper reports the first-principles study of SnO under high pressure within the generalized gradient approximation (GGA). We have calculated the structural, elastic, electronic and optical properties of SnO. The elastic properties such as the elastic constants Cij, bulk modulus, shear modulus, Young’s modulus, anisotropic factor, Pugh’s ratio and Poisson’s ratio are calculated and analyzed. Mechanical stability of SnO at all pressures is confirmed using the Born’s stability conditions in terms of Cij. It is also found that SnO exhibits very high anisotropy. The energy band structure and density of states are also calculated and analyzed. The results show the semiconducting and metallic properties at zero and high pressures, respectively. Furthermore, the optical properties are also calculated. All the results are compared with those of SnO where available but most of the results at high pressure are not compared due to the unavailability of results.

Predicting the popularity of online news from content metadata

Abstract: Popularity prediction of online news aims to predict the future popularity of news article prior to its publication estimating the number of shares, likes, and comments. Yet, popularity prediction is a challenging task due to various issues including difficulty to measure the quality of content and relevance of content to users; prediction difficulty of complex online interactions and information cascades; inaccessibility of context outside the web; local and geographic conditions; social network properties. This paper focuses on popularity prediction of online news by predicting whether users share an article or not, and how many users share the news adopting before publication approach. This paper proposes the gradient boosting machine for popularity prediction using features that are known before publication of articles. The proposed model shows around 1.8% improvement over previously applied techniques on a benchmark dataset. This model also indicates that features extracted from articles keywords, publication day, and the data channel are highly influential for popularity prediction.

Search and rescue system for alive human detection by semi-autonomous mobile rescue robot

Abstract: In this modern era, technological development lead the creation of sky scraper buildings and dwellings which increase risks of losing life due to natural and manmade disasters. Many people died by trapping under debris as their presence cannot detect by the rescue team. Sometimes, it is impossible to reach in certain points of the disasters in such calamity hit zones. The situation is worst for developing country like Bangladesh because of low quality design and construction. In this paper, PIR sensor based semi-autonomous mobile rescues robot is developed which can detect live human being from an unreachable point of the disaster area. Joystick and RF technology is used to control the semi-autonomous robot and communicate with control point. Ultrasonic sensor is used for obstacle detection in navigation path of robot and gas sensor is used to detect gas leak inside the building. IP Camera is also integrated to observe and analyze conditions that will facilitate human detection in reliable manner with highest probability of success rate in that kind of situation.

Design & implementation of a line following robot for irrigation based application

Abstract: The agriculture sector is the backbone of an economy which provides the basic ingredients to mankind and raw materials for industrialization. With the increasing number of the population over the world, the demand for agricultural products is also increased. In order to increase the production rate, irrigation technique should be more efficient. The irrigation techniques used till date are not in satisfactory level, especially in a developing country like Bangladesh. This paper has proposed a line follower robot for irrigation based application which may be considered as a cost-effective solution by minimizing water loss as well as an efficient system for irrigation purposes. This proposed system does not require an operator to accomplish its task. This gardening robot is completely portable and is equipped with a microcontroller, an on-board water reservoir, and an attached water pump. The area to be watered by the robot can be any field with plants, placed in a predefined path. It is capable of comparing movable objects and stationary plants to minimize water loss and finally watering them autonomously without any human intervention. The designed robot was tested and it performed nicely.

Structural, Elastic, and Electronic Properties of Newly Discovered Li2PtSi3 Superconductor: Effect of Transition Metals

Abstract: A density functional study with a GGA-PBE exchange-correlation scheme has been carried out to predict the structural, elastic, and electronic properties of the newly discovered lithium silicide superconductor, Li2PtSi3, for the first time. All the theoretical results are compared with those found recently for isostructural Li2IrSi3. This study sheds light on the important effect of replacement of the transition metal element Ir with Pt, on different mechanical, electronic, and superconducting properties. The role of spin–orbit coupling on the electronic band structure is found to be insignificant for Li2PtSi3. The difference in superconducting transition temperatures of Li2PtSi3 and Li2IrSi3 arises primarily due to the difference in electronic energy density of states at the Fermi level. Somewhat reduced Debye temperature in Li2PtSi3 plays a minor role. We have discussed the implications of the theoretical findings in details in this paper.

Antioxidant, antidiarrheal, hypoglycemic and thrombolytic activities of organic and aqueous extracts of Hopea odorata leaves and in silico PASS prediction of its isolated compounds.

Abstract: Hopea Odorata, locally known as Telsur (Bangladesh), has some traditional uses as folk medicine. This study aims to investigate the antioxidant, antidiarrheal, hypoglycemic and thrombolytic activities of H. odorata leaf extracts as new therapeutic prospects predicting the activity of some of the isolated compounds of this plant. Leaves of Hopea odorata was extracted with pure methanol (MEHO), ethanol (EEHO) and water (AEHO). The extract was tested for antioxidant activity by using reducing power and H2O2 scavenging assay. Antidiarrheal effects were assayed by three standard methods of bioassay: Castor oil-induced diarrhea, Castor oil induced enteropooling and gastrointestinal transit test. Hypoglycemic effect was determined by normoglycemic model of mice. Thrombolytic activity was evaluated by clot lyses test for human and mice blood. In silico PASS prediction was applied for phytoconstituents namely Balanocarpol, Hopeaphenol and Ampelopsin H isolated from this plant. Among the all extracts, MEHO exhibited strong antioxidant activity in both reducing power and H2O2 scavenging assay. Phenol content of MEHO was 297.22 ± 0.78 mg/g and flavonol content was 91.53 ± 1.82 mg/g. All the experiment of extracts at dose of 200 and 400 mg/kg and the standard drug loperamide (5 mg/kg) showed significant (p < 0.001) inhibition against castor oil induced diarrhea and castor oil induced enteropooling in mice. There were also significant (p < 0.01) reduction in gastrointestinal motility in the charcoal meal test. Leaf extract showed no significant (P < 0.01) decrease of blood glucose compared to Glibenclamide in normoglycemic mice. Using an in vitro thrombolytic model, MEHO showed the highest and significant clot lysis of human and mice blood compared to Streptokinase. PASS predicted the wide range of antioxidant, free radical scavenger, Nitric oxide scavenger, cardioprotectant, hepatoprotectant, thrombolytic, fibrinolytic, antibacterial, antifungal, anticarcinogenic, anthelmintic and anti-inflammatory activity of examined phytoconstituents. These findings suggest that the plant may be a potential source of new antidiarrheal, thrombolytic and antioxidative agents but it is found to have no antidiabetic capability. PASS prediction matched with present study for the extracts. Further study needs to identify the PASS predicted biological actions of the phytoconstituents.

Efficiency analysis of major microfinance institutions in Bangladesh: a Malmquist index approach

Abstract: Microfinance institutions (MFIs) have dual objectives- reaching under privileged households for poverty easing and achieving financial sustainability This paper investigates the efficiency of major 15 MFIs in Bangladesh using Malmquist index (MI) over the period 2008–2012 A balanced panel dataset of 75 observations is used The results from MI are decomposed into three efficiency scores—technical efficiency (TCH), scale efficiency (SE) and pure efficiency (PE) The empirical findings indicate that MFIs are experienced an excellent annual efficiency progress (935 %) which was mainly because of PE PE measures the capacity of optimizing minimum input to produce maximum output by reducing production wastage This outstanding growth was an outcome of country’s ever best economic settings before 2008 However, from 2009 onward, a substantial efficiency regresses is observed The results also signify that the major MFIs have less capacity to work at their optimal scales The contribution of SE is very low (only 22 %) compared to total efficiency progress Findings from TCH indicate that the overall frontier is moving relatively slow in an outward direction (only 37 % of TCH progress)

A compact triangular shaped microstrip patch antenna with triangular slotted ground for UWB application

Abstract: This paper is aimed to present a very small sized patch antenna for UWB applications. The antenna used microstrip feed-line. This antenna is very small in dimension. The total size of the antenna is 20×18mm2. Triangular slots in the partial ground plane, are used to get a better bandwidth. The antenna has VSWR<2 over the bandwidth. The whole designing and simulation process of the antenna is done by CST Microwave Studio software.

Optimal placement of Phasor Measurement Units for transmission grid observability

Abstract: Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) provides both magnitude and phase information of current and voltage signals with appropriate time stamp which is very useful in controlling power system networks in real time. Consequently, PMU is considered as one of the most significant measurement devices for complete observability of the future electricity grids. But placing PMU in every bus of the network is not economically viable. This paper aims to place PMUs in different buses of electric network to ensure full network observability employing five evolutionary, colony and swarm optimization algorithms namely backtracking search algorithm (BSA), differential evolution (DE), artificial bee colony (ABC), particle swarm optimization (PSO) and invasive weed optimization (IWO). The proposed algorithms have been tested on IEEE 14-bus, 30-bus, 39-bus and 57-bus test networks. The obtained results illustrate the compatibility of the proposed schemes in compared to each other as well as in compared to available techniques in literatures.

First Principles Study of SnO Under High Pressure

Abstract: This article reports the study of SnO by using the first-principles pseudopotential plane-wave method within the generalized gradient approximation (GGA). We have calculated the structural, elastic, electronic and optical of SnO under high pressure. The elastic properties such as the elastic constants Cij bulk modulus, shear modulus, Young modulus, anisotropic factor, Pugh ratio, Poisson ratio are calculated and analyzed. Mechanical stability of SnO at all pressure are confirmed by using Born stability criteria in terms of elastic constants and are associated with ductile behaviour based on G/B ratios. It is also found that SnO exhibits very high anisotropy. The energy band structure and density of states are also calculated and analyzed. The results show the semiconducting and metallic properties at 0 (zero) and high pressure, respectively. Furthermore, the optical properties such as dielectric function, refractive index, photoconductivity, absorption coefficients, loss function and reflectivity are also calculated. All the results are compared with those of the SnO where available but most of the results at high pressure are not compared due to unavailability of the results.

Multiple sensors based fire extinguisher robot based on DTMF, bluetooth and GSM technology with multiple mode of operation

Abstract: In this paper, design and development of a multiple sensors based fire extinguisher robot is proposed and implementation is demonstrated with a brief discussion of construction and operation. The developed fire extinguisher robot can be operated in multiple modes using the DTMF and Bluetooth remote control as well as GSM and GPS technology. Basically, three different sensors of flame sensor, temperature sensor, and smoke sensor have been used to ensure proper detection of fire. The robot can be controlled using both DTMF remote control and Android smartphone and can be operated in three different modes. The first mode allows full autonomous operation of the robot which can be activated by the user or by the robot itself based on the situation. The second mode is a line following mode where robot follows a black drawn line to detect fire and the third mode is complete manual operation using remote control.

Design and implementation of a digital calling bell with door lock security system using fingerprint.

Abstract: The term ‘Home Security’ numerously growing as a major concerning issue in today's life. The challenge of developing a home security device is to make it user friendly which can reduce human effort as well as ensure safety and security of people and their home. In this paper, a security device is proposed which is developed from the concept of conventional calling bell. The device analyzes the fingerprint of a person and matches it with stored fingerprint database to categorize the person as home member or known guest or unknown guest. When it detects a home member the entrance door automatically opens. In case, the person categorize as known guest, the device sounds a tune but don't open the door automatically rather people inside home can open the entrance door from anywhere of the home. As guest is known people don't need to walk towards door to open it. And when device detects the person as unknown guest, it generates a tunes which is different from previous one making aware the people inside that an unknown person wish to enter your home.