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Back ground : Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) means that the infant receives only breast milk for the first six months of life after birth. In Bangladesh, 55% of children less than 6 months of age are exclusively breastfed according to BDHS 2014.Objectives : To assess the exclusive breast feeding practice and associated factors among children in an urban area ofBangladesh. Method :This cross-sectional study was conducted in Popular Medical College, Dhanmondi, Dhaka, among 80 mothers having infants aged 7-12 months, attending the outpatient department were selected purposively for the study during the period of 1st August 2017 to 31st December 2017. Sample were selected purpasively for the study and predesigned questionnaire were used for data collection. Data analysis was done by using SPSS software version 22.Result : It was found that only 30(37.5%) mother went for regular antenatal checkup and remaining 50 (62.5%) had irregular antenatal check up. But none of them got breastfeeding advice during antenatal visit. Breastfeeding was initiated with in 1 hour of birth in 36(40%) cases and 44 (60%) cases after 1hour of birth. Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF)was found in 40 (50%) children. Among them 30 (75%) were children of housewife mothers. Mixed feeding (breast milk plus formula/ cow's milk) was given to 30 children among them18 (60%) were the children of housewife mothers.Only formula milk was given to 10 children of them 8(80%) were the children of housewife mothers.Exclusive breast milk was not given by 18(45%) mothers due to job or other occupation whereas 22 (55%) mother did not give EBF due to insufficient breast milk. Conclusion :In the study rate of exclusive breast feeding was 50%. This study also showed that frequency of exclusive breast feeding practice was lower in working mothers than housewife mothers. This study also showed that the speculation of not getting sufficient milk was one of the main reasons for not giving exclusive breastfeeding.

Understanding traffic progression on arterials is critical for traffic signal control and urban traffic management. Traffic conditions are highly dynamic and evolve over time. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the arterial’s performance periodically to determine how well a traffic signal system is functioning. Arterial performance is conventionally evaluated based on travel time/speed collected via the probe vehicles. New approaches based on high-resolution traffic signal events have been proposed by a group at Purdue University, based on the Purdue Coordination Diagrams (PCDs). Both traditional arterial travel times/speeds and the PCDs can effectively reflect the level of traffic progression on arterials, while some practical questions have been raised about how to synthesize these two methods. The framework proposed in this paper integrates two types of performance measures by defining new multi-intersection coordination diagrams to examine traffic signal performance. The multi-intersection coordination diagram under different speeds can provide a straightforward tool for informed offset adjustments of actuated traffic signal coordination. In contrast, the state-of-the-practice traffic coordination performance analysis relies on fixed timings and empirical fine-tuning in the field. It is expected that these efforts can provide new insights to practitioners on how to use emerging traffic data better to improve the performance of actuated traffic signal operations on arterials.

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Traditional formulations for transportation optimization problems mostly build complicating attributes into constraints while keeping the succinctness of objective functions. A popular solution is the Lagrangian decomposition by relaxing complicating constraints and then solving iteratively. Although this approach is effective for many problems, it generates intractability in other problems. To address this issue, this paper presents an alternative formulation for transportation optimization problems in which the complicating attributes of target problems are partially or entirely built into the objective function instead of into the constraints. Many mathematical complicating constraints in transportation problems can be efficiently modeled in dynamic network loading (DNL) models based on the demand–supply equilibrium, such as the various road or vehicle capacity constraints or “IF–THEN” type constraints. After “pre-building” complicating constraints into the objective functions, the objective function can be approximated well with customized high-fidelity DNL models. Three types of computing benefits can be achieved in the alternative formulation: ( a) the original problem will be kept the same; ( b) computing complexity of the new formulation may be significantly reduced because of the disappearance of hard constraints; ( c) efficiency loss on the objective function side can be mitigated via multiple high-performance computing techniques. Under this new framework, high-fidelity and problem-specific DNL models will be critical to maintain the attributes of original problems. Therefore, the authors’ recent efforts in enhancing the DNL’s fidelity and computing efficiency are also described in the second part of this paper. Finally, a demonstration case study is conducted to validate the new approach.

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Background : Dengue is the most important arthropod transmitted human viral disease and constitutes an important worldwide health problem including Bangladesh. Although children are the usual victim of dengue infection, there is paucity of published data regarding its clinical profile and outcome in children in our country. Objective: Now, in case of children Dengue fever is a common cause of acute febrile illness in our country, but the magnitude of it is quite unknown. Therefore, this study aims to find out the common clinical manifestations, the early warning signs and the outcome of dengue fever in different age group of children. Materials and Methods: The present study was conducted in the Popular Medical College Hospital, Dhanmondi, Dhaka (a tertiary care private hospital) between July to September of 2019 on children of dengue fever from 1year up to 15 years of age. It is a retrospective observational study. Results: A total of 58 cases were enrolled. The common clinical presentations included fever (100%), arthralgia (81.9%), cough/ coryza (17.2%), headache/retro orbital pain (3.4%), and rash (10.3%). The common early warning signs at the time of admission were persistent vomiting (41.4%), severe abdominal pain (27.6%), Hepatomegaly (6.9%). Regarding clinical course, in Dengue fever (DF), Dengue Hemorrhagic fever (DHF) and Dengue Shock Syndrome (DSS) total 36 (62%), 14 (24.2%), 8 (13.8%) children are affected respectively. Conclusion: The clinical manifestations of dengue fever are like other viral infections, but the disease severity is more in dengue. Thus, if we able to find out the more common clinical findings of dengue fever, it would help us in early diagnosis and early initiation of appropriate treatment. In this study we found that the most common clinical symptom was fever, found in 100% cases, arthralgia in 81.9%, cough/ coryza in 17.2%, headache / retro orbital pain in 10.3% and rash in 3.4% cases. Among the 58 cases 36 (62%) were diagnosed as DF, 14 (24.2%) as DHF and 8 (13.8%) as DSS and no death was occurred. Northern International Medical College Journal Vol. 12 No.1 July 2020, Page 499-502