We conducted an AFM analysis of roughness on 7 materials widely used in bone reconstruction. Roughness was evaluated by measuring Root Mean Square (RMS) values and RMS/average height (AH) ratio, in different dimensional ranges, varying from 100 microns square to a few hundreds of nanometers. The results showed that Titanium presented a lower roughness than the other materials analyzed, frequently reaching statistical significance. On the contrary, bioactive materials, such as hydroxyapatite (HA) and bioactive glasses, demonstrated an overall higher roughness. In particular, this study focuses attention on AP40 and especially RKKP, which proved to have a significant higher roughness at low dimensional ranges. This determines a large increase in surface area, which is strongly connected with osteoblast adhesion and growth and to protein absorption. Therefore, the biointegration properties of bioactive glasses can also be given as answer in terms of surface structures in which chemical composition can influence directly the biological system (e.g. with chemical exchanges and development of specific surface electrical charge) and indirectly, via the properties induced on tribological behavior that expresses itself during the smoothing of the surfaces. We also test two new bioactive glasses, RBP1 and RBP2, with a chemical composition similar to AP40, but with some significant small additions and substitutions of components, in order to make preliminary considerations on their potential role in orthopedics.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that around 2 billion people across the globe are suffering from “hidden hunger”, where 815 million are under malnutrition. The major essential elements for humans are Fe, Zn, I, Se, Ca, F, and also vitamins. Among them, Zn is considered in the fifth place leading to causes of several deficiency diseases. At least one-third of the population in the world is facing Zn deficiency including around 450,000 children under the age of five. Vitamin A, Fe, and Zn deficiencies can be overcome through the biofortification of staple foodstuffs. This review emphasizes various breeding and agronomic approaches for the biofortification of Zn in wheat grains, which is an encouraging and cost-effective method to enhance the Zn contents of cereal grains. Recently, the Bangladesh Wheat and Maize Research Institute (BWMRI), with technical support from CIMMYT, Mexico, released a promising new Zn-biofortified wheat cultivar, ‘BARI Gom 33’, a result from a conventional breeding program. It has 32 and 50–55 mg kg⁻¹ Zn without and with soil application of ZnSO₄, respectively. This cultivar could be a savior for a million people in South Asia, including Bangladesh.

The experiments were conducted at the Soil Science Field Laboratory of Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh during boro season of 2013 to evaluate the effect of deep placement of nitrogen (N) fertilizers on rice yield and N use efficiency under two different water regimes [continuous flooding (CF) and alternate wetting and drying (AWD)]. After deep placement of USG and NPK briquettes and each split application of PU, the water samples were collected for five consecutive days and analyzed for ammonium-Nitrogen (NH 4 -N) concentration. In both water regimes the floodwater NH 4 -N concentration gave highest value at the second day of PU application followed by gradual decrease with time and in continuous flooding condition the release of NH 4 -N was higher compared to AWD condition. Deep placement of N fertilizers also increased grain yield under AWD compared to CF condition and the maximum value was obtained in treatment T 5 [USG 78 kg N ha -1 + PM 3 t ha ]. Due to application USG and NPK briquettes, the N uptake and N use efficiency also gave higher values in AWD compared to CF condition. The results revealed that the deep placement of USG with poultry manure performed better in terms yield, N uptake and N use efficiency by BRRI dhan29 under AWD condition. So, the deep placement of USG under AWD condition could be recommended for higher production of boro rice.

The morphology of esophagus of Black Bengal goat was studied 6 Black Bengal goats of over six months of age of both sex in the Department of Anatomy and Histology, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh-2202, Bangladesh using. The topography, shape, size, esophageal length including cervical and thoracic parts were measured. The esophagus was sampled at six sites - cranial cervical, middle cervical, caudal cervical, at the level of thoracic inlet, at the middle mediastinum and at the level of cardia. The esophagus was 45-50 cm long. The cervical part of esophagus was 13-15 cm long and the thoracic part was 32-30 cm long. The highest and lowest diameter was found 5.1 cm and 3.2 cm at the cardia and at the cranial cervical part of the esophagus respectively. Key words: Morphology, esophagus, Black Bengal goat doi: 10.3329/bjvm.v6i2.2340   Bangl. J. Vet. Med. (2008). 6 (2): 223-225

The investigation was conducted to detect infectious bronchitis (IB) virus-specific antibody in chicken from some selected areas of Bangladesh. The indirect enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (iELISA) was performed to estimate the infectious bronchitis virus specific antibody. In case of sera-samples collected from BRAC diagnostic laboratory, Gazipur, 100% sera samples were found to be positive to IBV; the highest antibody titres were recorded as 9867.29. The average antibody titre of samples from Anis Poultry Farm, Pabna and farms driven by beneficiary of SDC, Faridpur and layer chickens reared with the help of BEES, Hobigonj were recorded as 1234.38, 1076.94 and 4572.85 and percent of sero-positive cases were 56.67%, 43.33% and 92.50% respectively. In this study all breeds of chicken (non descriptive indigenous and commercial) and age groups were found equally susceptible to IB.