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This paper focuses on COVID-19 and human rights in the Global South. Controlling COVID-19 has become very challenging to the courtiers in the Global South and the Global North. Various restrictive measures, mainly lockdown, home quarantine, travel restrictions and social distancing have been taken in both Global North and South to control COVID-19. However, the lower-middle and poor class people of the Global South have suffered from these restrictive measures. Thus, this paper aims to explore the human rights issues of the Global South during COVID-19.

This study is a qualitative research based on secondary materials. It includes relevant scholarly articles, news reports and various reports from different national and international organizations. It critically reviews the current literature related to the topic to develop a theoretical understanding of human rights and public health in general and human rights challenges in COVID-19 in the Global South in particular. Existing international human rights principles in the case of public health were reviewed and discussed to identify the links between human rights laws in public health perspectives. Contents analysis was carried out to identify the relevant themes on the issues of human rights in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper finds that universal guidelines to control COVID-19 challenged the human rights norms, which impacts the enjoyment of human rights in the Global South. The human rights of the people in the Global South were undermined in the response to the control of COVID-19.

This paper is a significant study on the issues of human rights in public health emergencies. It addresses how the human rights of the vulnerable people in the Global South are undermined in the global pandemic response, which can be useful for the countries in the Global South for ensuring better human rights-based responses in the future.

Environmental regulation policy and cleaner production technology innovation are the key links to achieve sustainable economic development. This paper tests the impact of Two Control Zone (TCZ) environmental regulation policy on cleaner production technology innovation and explains the heterogeneity effect between them from the perspective of regional pollution intensity and R&D investment scale.

This paper takes TCZ policy as an environmental regulation policy and collects the patent data related to coal desulfurization cleaner production technology innovation in prefecture-level cities from 1994 to 2002 in China. This paper also tests the relationship between TCZ environmental regulation policy and cleaner production technology innovation based on difference in difference (DID) model. Take regional R&D investment scale and pollution intensity as category variables and analyze the heterogeneity effect of TCZ environmental regulation policy on cleaner production technology innovation based on difference-in-difference-in-difference (DDD) model.

TCZ environmental regulation policy effectively promotes China's cleaner production technology innovation, but it is more conducive to cleaner production technology innovation in heavy pollution areas. With the increasing of R&D investment scale, the positive effect of TCZ environmental regulation policy on cleaner production technology innovation is stronger.

On the basis of this study, the authors should further explore the regulatory factors of the relationship between TCZ environmental regulation policy and cleaner production technology innovation and further expand the research object, so as to make the research conclusions more practical and instructive.

This paper tests the impact of TCZ environmental regulation policy on cleaner production technology innovation based on the prefecture city level data and DID model, and it handles the endogenous problem caused by the missing variables and provides the accurate conclusions. Moreover, this paper examines the heterogeneity effect of TCZ environmental regulation policy on cleaner production innovation from regional R&D investment scale and pollution intensity two hands and expands the existing theoretical research.

This study/paper aims to evaluate the floral richness of the central part of Chattogram city, Bangladesh. Chattogram is recognized as the largest port city and the commercial capital of Bangladesh, which confronts faster urbanization and swift infrastructure development. Green spaces in and around Chattogram city are shrinking sharply, which resulted in rapid loss of floral and faunal resources in this area. The present study was carried out from February 2018 to January 2019 to enumerate the vascular plant species of the Sulakbahar ward located in the central part of Chattogram City, Bangladesh.

The study area was categorized into 10 habitats to assess the variation of floral composition. The extensive whole area survey method was applied to record the flora from all sorts of plant habitats of the research area.

The study enumerated 418 vascular plant species under 315 genera and 120 families including natural, planted and cultivated from the study area. The habit form of the recorded plant composition indicated that herbs (35%) constitute the major plant category followed by trees (34%), shrubs (17%), climbers (12%), ferns (1%) and orchids (1%). The study also indicated that exotic species (50.3%) became dominant than native species (49.7%) in Chattogram city because of their scenic beauty, easy propagation and ornamental value to the city planners and inhabitants.

It appeared that floral resources of the Chattogram city area are in great threat due to aggressive and unplanned infrastructure development for housing, offices and institutions by replacing the green spaces. The study recommended that urgent protection measures should be taken to conserve and protect the existing floral resources for the well-being of the urban people.

There is a strong prerequisite for organizations to analyze customer review behavior to evaluate the competitive business environment. The purpose of this study is to analyze and predict customer reviews of halal restaurants using machine learning (ML) approaches.

The authors collected customer review data from the Yelp website. The authors filtered the reviews of only halal restaurants from the original data set. Following cleaning, the filtered review texts were classified as positive, neutral or negative sentiments, and those sentiments were scored using the AFINN and VADER sentiment algorithms. Also, the current study applies four machine learning methods to classify each review toward halal restaurants into its sentiment class.

The experiment showed that most of the customer reviews toward halal restaurants were positive. The authors also discovered that all of the methods (decision tree, linear support vector machine, logistic regression and random forest classifier) can correctly classify the review text into sentiment class, but logistic regression outperforms the others in terms of accuracy.

The results facilitate halal restaurateurs in identifying customer review behavior.

Sentiment and emotions, according to appraisal theory, form the basis for all interactions, facilitating cognitive functions and supporting prospective customers in making sense of experiences. Emotion theory also describes human affective states that determine motives and actions. The study looks at how potential customers might react to a halal restaurant’s consensus on social media based on reviewers’ opinions of halal restaurants because emotions can be conveyed through reviews.

This study applies machine learning approaches to analyze and predict customer sentiment based on the review texts toward halal restaurants.

Despite city authorities in Bangladesh being concerned about urban sustainability, they often face difficulties in addressing predominant urban challenges threatening urban sustainability, due to limited relevant literature. To reduce this gap, this study aims to address the predominant urban challenges and assess their severity levels in four city corporations of Bangladesh, e.g. Rajshahi, Sylhet, Barishal, and Gazipur.

Using a mixed-method approach, this study rigorously analyzed field-level data obtained from 1,200 residents across selected cities using diverse statistical techniques. The quantitative analysis included descriptive analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and chi-square tests, whereas qualitative insights were derived through thematic analysis.

The study uncovered nine predominant urban challenges under two crucial factors “Feeble Urban Management” and “Illicit Activities” that collectively explain 62.20% variance. “Feeble Urban Management” explains 44.17% variance, whereas “Illicit Activities” accounts for 18.13%. Within these challenges, uncontrolled urban sprawl, inadequate disaster management, congested roads, and shabby drainage and waste management pose significant threats to urban sustainability. Illicit activities, manifested by encroachment on water sources, grabbing roadside, destruction of natural properties, and activities undermining social security, compound the urban sustainability issue. Severity analysis reveals Sylhet (54.5%), Rajshahi (46.4%), and Barishal (31.2%) as highly impacted, whereas Gazipur exhibits moderate severity (66.7%).

The findings of this study reveal intrinsic insights into urban challenges in Bangladesh that will provide valuable guidance to city authorities, equipping them to implement integrated and effective initiatives and programs that overcome these predominant urban challenges, with a specific focus on Rajshahi, Sylhet, and Barishal city corporations.

In this paper, the authors show that ecological restoration potential through natural regeneration of degraded tropical rainforest is possible. This is significant because at present most of the tropical forest of the world, including of Bangladesh, are degraded.

Regeneration status of Chunati Wildlife Sanctuary (CWS) was assessed through stratified random sampling method using sample plots of 5 × 5 m in size covering 269 sample plots.

A total of 3,256 regenerating seedlings/saplings of 105 species belonging to 35 families were recorded from CWS. From regenerating tree species, maximum (37.83) family importance value (FIV) index was found for Euphorbiaceae followed by Myrtaceae (18.03). Maximum importance value index (IVI) was found for Aporosa wallichii (21.62) followed by Grewia nervosa (16.41). Distribution of seedlings into different height classes of regenerating tree species was also calculated.

Forest scientists are working to find out the best nature-based solution for ecological restoration of tropical rainforests to attain climate resilient ecosystem in a sustainable way. Tropical rain forest has huge plant diversity, and we find that ecological restoration is possible through natural regeneration from its rich soil seed bank. Natural regeneration is the best nature-based solution for sustainable management of the forest.

The authors believe that the findings presented in our paper will appeal to the forest and environmental scientists. The findings will allow readers to understand degraded tropical hill forest ecosystem and its management strategy.

The authors believe that this manuscript will give a clear picture about degraded tropical hill forest ecosystem and its genetic composition, diversity and soil seed bank status to apply appropriate management strategy.

The purpose of the paper is to emphasize on contamination sources of freshly cultivated vegetables commonly consumed by the Bangladeshi people. Several local studies have been conducted to detect the microbial contamination within fresh vegetables, plantation lands and the irrigation waters separately; however, the correlation of microbial contamination between the fresh produces and the surrounding environment has not been clarified.

Bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria), pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo), radish (Raphanus sativus) and eggplant (Solanum melongena); their plantations soils and the fertilizers applied across the agricultural lands; and, finally, the irrigation waters used were analyzed from nine districts of Bangladesh using conventional microbiological and biochemical methods.

Almost all vegetable samples studied were found to be immensely contaminated with bacteria and fungi. Among the pathogens, Klebsiella spp., Staphylococcus spp. and Pseudomonas spp. were found to be dominant. Besides, massive microbial growth was also observed in the plantation soils and fertilizers, including Klebsiella spp., Pseudomonas spp., Bacillus spp., Listeria spp., Escherichia coli and Vibrio spp. Existence of the fecal coliforms, E. coli, Klebsiella spp., Salmonella spp. and Listeria spp., was noticed in the irrigation waters.

Although the present study revealed the combined results connecting the vegetable contamination aspect with the knowledge on microbiology ultimately in the food chain, implementation of molecular studies detecting the virulence genes both in the fresh produces and the plantation soils, fertilizers and the irrigation waters would further clarify the microbial dissemination mechanism.

Earlier studies demonstrated the ability of water bodies to disseminate numerous microorganisms into the plantation soils, and to some extent unraveled the ability of organic fertilizers to propagate pathogenic bacteria into the vegetation objects. These microorganisms may pose as a threat to vegetables, particularly by limiting crop production as well as the shelf life of the fresh produces.

The scenario of microbial divergence not only in the vegetables but also within the surroundings is gradually being heightened in Bangladesh principally due to the malpractice of sanitation, dumping the agricultural lands with feces, improperly controlled septic systems, waste water runoff across the agricultural lands, etc. Therefore, the preliminary and replicable experimental approach described in the current study would be feasible for all other developing countries to maintain the public health safety.

Growth and proliferation of microorganisms both in the vegetable samples and the environmental samples nearly to a similar extent indeed projected for the first time in Bangladesh, the agricultural perspective of the contamination sources of vegetables. Such knowledge would aid in the existing knowledge on the hygienic processing during crop production and harvesting for the sake of better consumer safety management.

The purpose of this paper is to present an ontology‐based approach of context‐sensitive computing for the optimization of flexible manufacturing systems (FMS).

A context‐sensitive computing approach is presented, integrated on top of FMS control platform. The approach addresses how to extract manufacturing contexts at source, how to process contextual entities by developing an ontology‐based context model and how to utilize this approach for real time decision making to optimize the key performance indicators (KPIs). A framework for such an optimization support system is proposed. A practical FMS use case within SOA‐based control architecture is considered as an illustrative example and the implementation of the core functionalities to the use case is reported.

Continuous improvement of the factory can be enhanced utilizing context‐sensitive support applications, which provides an intelligent interface for knowledge acquisition and elicitation. This can be used for improved data analysis and diagnostics, real time feedback control and support for optimization.

The performance of context‐sensitive computing increases with the extraction, modeling and reasoning of as much contexts as possible. However, more computational resources and processing times are associated to this. Hence, the trade‐off should be in between the extent of context processing and the required outcome of the support applications.

This paper includes the practical implications of context‐sensitive applications development in manufacturing, especially in the dynamic operating environment of FMS.

Reported results provide a modular approach of context‐sensitive computing and a practical use case implementation to achieve context awareness in FMS. The results are seen extendable to other manufacturing domains.

This study is designed and directed to analyze the effect of board characteristics and audit committee attributes on the firm performance of publicly listed commercial banks of Bangladesh.

Thirty publicly listed commercial banks of Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) have been taken as sample for this study. Data have been collected from annual reports between 2011 and 2017 of the assessed banks. Pooled OLS model has been used for running regression model of this study.

Board independence has a negative and significant relationship with ROA and Tobin's Q. However, Board Independence has a positive and significant relationship with Stock Return. On the other hand, Board Diversity has a negative and significant relationship with ROA and ROE, which implies inefficiency of diversified board members in the context of Bangladesh. Family duality has a positive and significant relationship with ROA and a negative and significant relationship with Stock return. Board Meeting has a positive and significant relationship with ROA. Audit Committee Size has a negative and significant relationship with Tobins' Q. Independence of audit committee chairman has a negative and significant relationship with Tobin's Q and Stock Returns. Presence of non-executive directors and number of audit meetings have no significant relationship with any of the predicted variables.

Among all variables of the board characteristics, role of independent directors and participation of female directors have conflicting results in this study. This has raised a question about the fair appointment independent directors and their objective view on the board. Female directors' role is not convincing in the context of Bangladesh as most of the commercial banks are family-owned. Policymakers can tighten and supervise the appointment of independent directors to ensure good governance in the banking sector. Moreover, role of audit committee and independence of audit committee chairman have generated conflicting results in terms of market-based performance measure.

Banking sector of Bangladesh experiences huge corruption in the form of excessive NPLs and poor management quality which results in low profit for the firm. This study has explored the problems of management quality and flaws of audit committee which is hampering overall growth of banking industry. Improvement of independent directors' appointment and audit committee formation and reporting will certainly help banking industry of Bangladesh to improve overall performance.

This study aims to evaluate the association between dietary patterns with health status and smoking-related knowledge, attitudes and practices (s-KAP) among Bangladeshi adolescent smokers.

An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted among 205 randomly selected adolescents. Socio-demographic, health status, s-KAP related data were collected in face-to-face interviews. Dietary intake data were calculated using the food frequency questionnaire.

The practices score (44.8%) was comparatively poor among adolescent smokers. Among the respondents, around 56.1%, 38.1% and 49.3% were suffering from gastric problems, nausea and the loss of appetite, respectively, because of smoking. There was a significant relationship between dietary diversity and the occurrence of several diseases such as gastric problems, nausea and loss of appetite. The respondents who consumed fresh fruits and vegetables regularly might reduce gastric problems (OR: 0.53, 95% CI: 0.27–1.04 and OR: 0.64, 95% CI: 0.25–1.65), nausea (OR: 0.72, 95% CI: 0.38–1.37 and OR: 0.28, 95% CI: 0.13–0.84) and loss of appetite (OR: 0.52, 95% CI: 0.32–1.21 and OR: 0.16 95% CI: 0.27–0.68).

In conclusion, smoking has been associated with multiple health problems because of poor practices score. Consumption of a balanced diet, better smoking-related knowledge, attitudes and practices needs to be improved among adolescents.