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This paper examines the relation between fintech-based inclusive finance and bank efficiency using annual unbalanced data of 318 banks from 7 dual-banking countries over the period of 2011 to 2020. It measures bank efficiency using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) and then applies the Simar-Wilson bootstrapping regression to measure the influence of fintech-based financial inclusion on bank efficiency. From the efficiency measures, we note that Islamic banks are more efficient than their conventional counterparts. Our regression analysis indicates that fintech-based inclusive finance is positively related to bank efficiency, implying that greater implementation of digitally integrated financial system improves banking efficiency. Our findings are robust in alternative estimation methods. Our study provides some policy implications for policymakers, standard setters, and regulators.

In this paper, we investigate the differential impact of ESG activities on banks’ technical efficiency for conventional and Islamic banks. We employ a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique to determine the efficiency scores of the banks. Based on a sample of 14 conventional and 11 Islamic banks from 4 countries over the period 2011 - 2019, we find that average DEA-generated efficiency of conventional (Islamic) banks is about 38.8% (42.45%). Baseline Tobit regressions suggest that ESG has an overall positive impact on banks’ efficiency. Further, we analyze the relationship for conventional and Islamic banks separately. We find that the positive effect sustains for conventional banks but turns out to be insignificant for Islamic banks. Our individual ESG dimension-wise analyses suggest that environmental activities positively influence the efficiency of both conventional and Islamic banks, whereas social activities strengthen the efficiency of conventional banks only. We do not find any significant result in favor of governance-related initiatives. Our baseline results survive the robustness test based on Simar and Wilson (2007) two-stage efficiency analysis. Based on our findings, we argue that Islamic banks lack sufficient investment on ESG friendly initiatives. We recommend that Islamic banks increase their awareness of the benefits of ESG practices and pay attention to improve their overall and dimension-wise ESG scores with a goal to improve their banking efficiency.

Background: Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen that uses quorum-sensing (QS) and biofilm formation to subvert antibiotic therapy. Antibiotic resistance has led to a demand for alternative methods of treatment, and destabilizing the LasR-OdDHL binding with inhibitors offers a potential solution. Methods: This study aimed to construct a homology model of the LasR protein using the genetic sequence of the P. aeruginosa DMC-27b strain (GenBank: SMRY00000000.2). Molecular docking, molecular mechanics-based binding free energy calculation, and pharmacokinetic analysis were performed on 1900 3D structures collected from synthetic and natural compound databases to identify three potential lead molecules. These compounds were evaluated using ADMET (absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, toxicity) analysis, and molecular dynamics protocols were used to refine the results. Results: The three lead compounds showed higher binding capability with the LasR receptor than the native ligand and passed the ADMET evaluation stage. In total, 44 properties remained within the range of 95% of known drugs, indicating their potential efficacy as drugs against P. aeruginosa and other bacteria that use a similar QS system. Conclusions: This study provides insights into potential drug designing and development against clinical isolates of emerging P. aeruginosa strains and other bacteria that use a similar QS system.

Background Accidental poisoning is a leading cause of unintentional injuries among children in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). The overall aspect of this unintentional poisoning is poorly understood in Bangladesh. The objectives of this study were (1) to explore the socio-demographic factors and circumstantial context of accidental poisoning and (2) the prevalence of the type of substances causing it.Methods A descriptive case series study was conducted from April 2019 to February 2020 at a tertiary level hospital of the capital city Dhaka in Bangladesh. Children under 10 years of age admitted to the hospital with accidental poisoning were enrolled in this study. Parents of hospitalised children were interviewed face-to-face using a structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used for data analysis.Results A total of 223 children were recruited in this study. Children between 2 and 5 years (60%), men (61%) and children with agility (65.5%) were among the prevalent victims. The majority of cases occurred (65%) in a nuclear family setting. Most mothers (85%) of these children were non-working and most incidents took place in parents’ homes (~82%). Nearly 70% of the poisoning incidents took place in the presence of parents and over half of these occurred in the bedroom. Kerosene was the prevalent cause (33%) of accidental poisoning while insecticide/pesticide ranked second (26.5%) followed by medicines (17%) and household chemicals (12). In one-third (31.4%) of the cases, poisoning chemicals were stored in soft drink bottles while two-thirds (67.3%) of the cases were kept in containers other than original ones. Although over 80 parents somewhat knew that chemicals could be harmful to the children if ingested, most of them did not take the safety measures.Conclusion In this present study we found that preschool-aged children were more victims of accidental poisoning mostly by ingesting kerosene and a majority of the incidents took place in the bedroom while parents were present at home. Our study findings would serve as a baseline for designing future intervention studies and policies.

Spectral flow cytometry provides greater insights into cellular heterogeneity by simultaneous measurement of up to 50 markers. However, analyzing such high-dimensional (HD) data is complex through traditional manual gating strategy. To address this gap, we developed CAFE as an open-source Python-based web application with a graphical user interface. Built with Streamlit, CAFE incorporates libraries such as Scanpy for single-cell analysis, Pandas and PyArrow for efficient data handling, and Matplotlib, Seaborn, Plotly for creating customizable figures. Its robust toolset includes density-based down-sampling, dimensionality reduction, batch correction, Leiden-based clustering, cluster merging and annotation. Using CAFE, we demonstrated analysis of a human PBMC dataset of 350,000 cells identifying 16 distinct cell clusters. CAFE can generate publication-ready figures in real time via interactive slider controls and dropdown menus, eliminating the need for coding expertise and making HD data analysis accessible to all. CAFE is licensed under MIT and is freely available at https://github.com/mhbsiam/cafe., Competing Interests: Ethics declarations: The authors declare they have no competing interests.

Flow cytometry is used for immune cell analysis for cell composition and function. Spectral flow cytometry allows for high-dimensional analysis of immune cells, overcoming limitations of conventional flow cytometry. However, analyzing data from large Ab panels is challenging using traditional biaxial gating strategies. We present, to our knowledge, a novel analysis pipeline to improve analysis of spectral flow cytometry. We employ this method to identify rare T cell populations in aging. We isolated splenocytes from young (2-3 mo old) and aged (18-19 mo old) female C57BL/6N mice and then stained these with a panel of 20 fluorescently labeled Abs. We performed spectral flow cytometry and then data processing and analysis using Python within a Jupyter Notebook environment to perform dimensionality reduction, batch correction, unsupervised clustering, and differential expression analysis. Our analysis of 3,776,804 T cells from 11 spleens revealed 35 distinct T cell clusters identified by surface marker expression. We observed significant differences between young and aged mice, with clusters enriched in one age group over the other. Naive, effector memory, and central memory CD8+ and CD4+ T cell subsets exhibited age-associated changes in abundance and marker expression. We also demonstrate the utility of our pipeline in a human PBMC dataset that used a 50-fluorescent color panel. By leveraging high-dimensional analysis methods, we provide insights into the immune aging process. This approach offers a robust and easily implemented analysis pipeline for spectral flow cytometry data that may facilitate the discovery of novel therapeutic targets for age-related immune dysfunction., (Copyright © 2024 by The American Association of Immunologists, Inc.)

Objective The health-seeking behavior (HSB) of patients during an outbreak is crucial in mitigating the spread of disease. Poor HSB can increase mortality and make contact tracing more difficult. In this study, we aimed to examine the status of HSB among Bangladeshi educated individuals during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic when infection was spreading quickly, and social distancing measures were tightened across the country. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional survey online among Bangladeshi individuals using a virtual snowball sampling method to capture suspected COVID-19 patients who did not undergo COVID-19 diagnostic testing. Descriptive and inferential analyses were performed with statistical significance defined as p<0.05. Results The study consisted of 390 participants with 44.9% having a bachelor's degree, followed by 25.9% with a master's or PhD degree. Commonly reported symptoms among the participants included fever (77.7%), cough (50.5%), headache (46.2%), body pain (36.4%), sore throat (35.6%), anosmia (31.3%), anorexia (13.8%), diarrhea (11.4%), and dyspnea (11.3%). The most common reasons for not taking the COVID-19 test were limited testing facilities (48%), the risk of infection from the test center (46%), fear of social stigma (19%), considering COVID-19 infection as innocuous (18%), and fear of forced quarantine (5%). In regression analysis, participants who lived in rural areas were found to be 2.5 times more likely to buy medications from nearby pharmacies. Males were more likely to self-medicate, with male participants being 3.2 times more likely than female participants to consider COVID-19 infection as harmless (AOR: 3.2, CI: 1.28-7.98). Smokers were more likely to seek help from government hotlines and to use drugs at home. Respondents with higher monthly income were less likely to fear forced quarantine (AOR: 0.27, CI: 0.4-2.02) but more likely to consider the risk of infection at the test center (AOR: 1.75, CI: 0.88-3.49). Conclusion Our study highlights that non-compliance with public health guidelines by educated people during an epidemic indicates a general lack of health literacy and distrust in the healthcare system. Along with improved infrastructure, efforts to enhance public health risk communication and health literacy are necessary to rebuild public trust in the healthcare service., Competing Interests: Human subjects: Consent was obtained or waived by all participants in this study. Biomedical Research Foundation, Dhaka, Bangladesh, issued approval BRF/ERB/2020/003. Ethics approval and formal permission for data collection for this study were obtained from the Biomedical Research Foundation, Bangladesh (Ref. no: BRF/ERB/2020/003). Animal subjects: All authors have confirmed that this study did not involve animal subjects or tissue. Conflicts of interest: In compliance with the ICMJE uniform disclosure form, all authors declare the following: Payment/services info: All authors have declared that no financial support was received from any organization for the submitted work. Financial relationships: All authors have declared that they have no financial relationships at present or within the previous three years with any organizations that might have an interest in the submitted work. Other relationships: All authors have declared that there are no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work., (Copyright © 2024, Siam et al.)

Hydrogels have gained significant attention in scientific communities for their versatile applications, but several challenges need to be addressed to exploit their potential fully. Conventional hydrogels suffer from poor mechanical strength, limiting their use in many applications. Moreover, the crosslinking agents used to produce them are often toxic, carcinogenic, and not bio-friendly. This study presents a novel approach to overcome these limitations by using bio-friendly modified nanocrystalline cellulose as a crosslinker to prepare highly stretchable and tough thermosensitive hydrogels. The surface of nanocrystalline cellulose was modified with 3-methacryloxypropyltrimethoxysilane (MPTS) to obtain modified nanocrystalline cellulose (M-NCC) crosslinker and used during free radical polymerization of thermosensitive N -isopropyl acrylamide (NIPA) monomer to synthesize NIPA/M-NCC hydrogel. The resulting nanocomposite hydrogels exhibit superior mechanical, thermal, and temperature-responsive swelling properties compared to conventional hydrogels prepared with traditional bi-functional N , N '-methylene bis (acrylamide) (MBA) as a crosslinker. The elongation at break, tensile strength, and toughness of the NIPA/M-NCC hydrogels significantly increase and Young's modulus decrease than conventional hydrogel. The designed M-NCC crosslinker could be utilized to improve the mechanical strength of any polymeric elastomer or hydrogel systems produced through chain polymerization., (© 2023 IOP Publishing Ltd.)