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Faculty members and students are invited to submit their research publications, theses, dissertations, and scholarly works to increase visibility, access, and long-term preservation.
Recent Submissions
The jamkhed comprehensive rural health project and the alma-ata vision of primary health care
(American Public Health Association Inc., 2019-05-01) Perry, Henry B.; Rohde, Jon; BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health
The Jamkhed Comprehensive Rural Health Project (Jamkhed CRHP) was established in central India in 1970. The Jamkhed CRHP approach, developed by Rajanikant and Mabelle Arole, was instrumental in influencing the concepts and principles embedded in the 1978 Declaration of Alma-Ata. The Jamkhed CRHP pioneered provision of services close to people’s homes, use of health teams (including community workers), community engagement, integration of services, and promotion of equity, all key elements of the declaration. The extraordinary contributions that the Jamkhed CRHP has made as it approaches its 50th anniversary need to be recognized as the world celebrates the 40th anniversary of the International Conference on Primary Health Care and the writing of the declaration. We describe the early influence of the Jamkhed CRHP on the declaration as well as the work at Jamkhed, its notable influence in improving the health of the people it has served and continues to serve, the remarkable contributions it has made to training people from around India and the world, and its remarkable influences on programs and policies in India and beyond.
Enhancing bidirectional sign language communication: Integrating YOLOv8 and NLP for real-time gesture recognition & translation
(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2025-01-01) Bhuiyan, Hasnat Jamil; Mozumder, Mubtasim Fuad; Khan, Md Rabiul Islam; Ahmed, Md Sabbir; Nahim, Nabuat Zaman; Department of Computer Science and Engineering
The primary concern of this research is to take American Sign Language (ASL) data through real time camera footage and be able to convert the data and information into text. Adding to that,we are also putting focus on creating a framework that can also convert text into sign language in real time which can help us break the language barrier for the people who are in need. In this work, for recognising American Sign Language (ASL), we have used the You Only Look Once(YOLO) model and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model. YOLO model is run in real time and automatically extracts discriminative spatial-temporal characteristics from the raw video stream without the need for any prior knowledge, eliminating design flaws.The CNN model here is also run in real time for sign language detection. We have introduced a novel method for converting text based input to sign language by making a framework that will take a sentence as input, identify keywords from that sentence and then show a video where sign language is performed with respect to the sentence given as input in real time.To the best of our knowledge, this is a rare study to demonstrate bidirectional sign language communication in real time in the American Sign Language (ASL).
Comparative genotype and allele frequency analysis of CYP1A1 polymorphisms (rs4646903 and rs1048943) in Bangladeshi shipyard workers with occupational heavy metal exposure
(BRAC University, 2026-08) Abdullah, MD. Abir; Rahman, Afifa Binte; Era, Nahiyan Raisa; Rahman, Neelanjana; Hossain, M. Mahboob; Department of Microbiology
Workers in the ship-breaking and metal-scrapping yards of Bangladesh are chronically exposed to a mixture of heavy metals that includes the Group 1 human carcinogens arsenic, cadmium, and chromium. Susceptibility to the genotoxic consequences of such exposure is modulated by inherited variation in xenobiotic-metabolizing enzyme genes, among which CYP1A1 is central: it is induced through the aryl hydrocarbon receptor by both polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and several of these metals, and it bioactivates pro-carcinogens into DNA-reactive intermediates. The study determined and compared the first CYP1A1 genotype and allele frequency data for a Bangladeshi ship-breaking and metal-scrapping workforce. Allele frequencies of two functional CYP1A1 polymorphisms, rs4646903 and rs1048943, were compared between 55 workers with ten years of occupational heavy metal exposure and 55 healthy unexposed controls. Genomic DNA was extracted from peripheral blood by spin column and genotyped by two-tube allele-specific Amplification Refractory Mutation System PCR (ARMS-PCR) with agarose gel electrophoresis, using two allele-specific forward primers and one common reverse primer per locus. Allele distributions were compared by chi-square, and the association between genotype and group membership was estimated by multivariable logistic regression adjusted for age and sex under codominant, dominant, recessive, over-dominant, and additive models.
Allele distributions differed significantly between the two groups at both loci (rs4646903: OR 0.492, 95% CI 0.282-0.859, P = 0.0121; rs1048943: OR 0.446, 95% CI 0.253-0.786, P = 0.0048). At rs4646903 the G-containing genotypes were associated with higher odds of worker status (additive OR 2.855, P = 0.0048), whereas at rs1048943 the C-containing genotypes were associated with lower odds (additive OR 0.302, P = 0.0037). No worker carried the rs1048943 CC genotype, rendering the recessive and CC-versus-TT contrasts inestimable. Age, but not sex, was an independent predictor of group membership in every model.
Because both polymorphisms are germline variants that cannot be induced by adult exposure, and because no clinical outcome was measured, these findings are interpreted as associations with exposure-group membership within this sample.
Template music transcription for different types of musical instruments
(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2010-05-28) Faruqe, Omar; Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Automatically recovering the musical notation for a given signal allows reproducing and modifying the original performance. Music transcription can be considered as extracting the sequence of the notes that best models our audio signal. So it is understood as the process of analyzing a music signal in order to write down the parameters of the sounds occurring in it. Another principal application is structured audio coding: a MIDI-like representation which is highly compact but holds on to the identification and characteristics of a musical note to a significant extent. The applied notation can be the traditional musical notation which gives sufficient information for performing the piece using the available musical instruments. Automatic Music Transcription (extracting musical notes from an audio stream) is a complicated task due to the complexity of musical sounds that requires an effective solution. The scope of this article is in the automatic transcription of the harmonic and melodic parts of the real-world music signals. Algorithms are proposed that address two distinct sub-problems of music transcription. The main part of the article emphasizes the estimation of the several concurrent musical notes. The other sub-problem discusses musical meter estimation. This has to do with rhythmic aspects of music and refers to the estimation of the regular pattern of strong and weak beats in a piece of music. Signal processing methods for the automatic transcription of music are developed in this paper.
Pregnant women's and community health workers' perceptions of root causes of malnutrition among infants and young children in the slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh
(2011-07-01) Goudet, Sophie M.; Faiz, Sabina; Bogin, Barry A.; Griffiths, Paula L.; BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health
Research in Bangladesh shows that malnutrition among infants and young children is most severe in urban slums. We examined the root causes of malnutrition as perceived by pregnant women and community health workers. We conducted 10 focus group discussions in the slums of Dhaka in 2008 and 2009. Participants accurately perceived inappropriate care, inappropriate environment, inappropriate food, and flooding to be major causes. Recurrent flooding has not traditionally been identified by experts as a cause of malnutrition. We recommend further research to address the nutritional risks flooding creates for vulnerable slum populations.