Corrigendum to "Financial and functionality analysis of biogas a plant in Bangladesh" [Heliyon 8(9), September 2022, Article e10727].

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e10727.].

Financial and functionality analysis of a biogas plant in Bangladesh.

Installation of a biogas plant in a rural region has become a viable alternative energy source with a variety of health and environmental advantages. Though Bangladesh has enormous resources for biogas production, biogas energy production is infancy stage in Bangladesh. The study aims to explore the economic aspect of household-level biogas plants and determine the relationship between biogas plant functionality and different factors. For doing this, 300 biogas plant owners were interviewed from fifteen Upazilla in Bangladesh and respondents were chosen by a two-stage random sampling technique. The study shows by measuring partial budgeting, USD 294.80 per year can be earned by a family by introducing biogas plant. Cost-benefit analysis showed that a small biogas plant (USD 143.07/year) was most profitable, followed by a large biogas plant (USD 142.17/year). In discounted cost-benefit analysis, medium size biogas plant was found to be the most beneficial investment, followed by a small size biogas plant. Average NPV, BCR, PBP, and IRR of Biogas plant were USD 1629.11, 1.77, 2.93, and 48% with subsidy where USD 1525.25, 1.77, 3.75, and 43% without subsidy. The measurement of carbon trading also highlights the economic benefit of a biogas plant in Bangladesh. The bivariate relationship between the functionality of biogas plants with different factors highlights that higher educated, trained plant owners with quality mason and follow up services ensured the efficient operation of the biogas plant.

Scaling the changes in lifestyle, attitude, and behavioral patterns among COVID-19 vaccinated people: insights from Bangladesh.

With the advent of COVID-19 vaccines, countries around the globe are anticipating a way out from the pandemic. Despite being an initiative to contain the COVID-19 virus spreading, the mass vaccination program also raised concerns about its consequences on the lifestyle, attitude, and behavioral pattern of vaccinated people in the post-vaccination period. With this in mind, this study investigated changes in lifestyle, attitude, and behavior among vaccinated people in Bangladesh. A cross-sectional survey was conducted incorporating 1227 COVID-19 vaccinated respondents from eight divisions of Bangladesh. The relative importance index (RII) was used to assess the most compelling lifestyle, attitude, and behavior changes, while binary logistic regression was used to identify factors driving the changes. Findings disclosed that respondents increased the physical contact with non-vaccinated ones and amplified consuming nutritious food after vaccination. The inclination of avoiding distance, handshaking, abandoning sanitizer and mask, visiting crowded places, traveling, and staying outside longer was found to be increased among vaccinated individuals. Surprisingly, about seven out of ten surveyed respondents exhibited a sedentary lifestyle, while 67.37% of respondents showed negative behavioral changes following the vaccination period. A positive attitude was observed in encouraging others to be vaccinated against COVID-19. However, 92% of the respondents positively changed their attitude toward the COVID-19 vaccine after vaccination. Furthermore, the participants' age, residence, economic status, and educational level influenced lifestyle, attitude, and behavioral changes positively. The study recommends informing citizens about the opacity of vaccinations' ability to contain infections and encouraging them to continue following COVID-19 protective guidelines.

Teaching during a pandemic: do university teachers prefer online teaching?

Universities worldwide have been conducting e-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic to continue education irrespective of faculties are familiar with e-education or not. This study assessed perception and preference for e-teaching amongst 438 faculty members. Results revealed that around half of teachers were conducting e-classes without any training, and they also had conducted examinations using online platforms. Teachers perceived e-teaching as effective during the pandemic, time-efficient, easy to share materials, unsuitable for monitoring or conducting practical classes and less effective for evaluation. More than three-fourths of the teachers preferred online teaching during the pandemic, and most preferred both physical and mixed teaching in the post-pandemic era. Their preferences were influenced by their age, teaching experience, academic discipline, current residency, training on online teaching, hours of online classes taught per week, internet connection used, types of classes and whether they had given online examinations. The major challenges in online teaching during COVID-19 were difficulty in practical work, difficulty in monitoring students and insufficient feedback. This study suggests online teaching during the pandemic and mixed teaching after the pandemic. Training faculty members on online teaching, designing e-platforms suitable for examinations and ensuring stable internet connections are also recommended for effective and smooth e-education.

Heading towards sustainable environment: exploring the dynamic linkage among selected macroeconomic variables and ecological footprint using a novel dynamic ARDL simulations approach.

Ever since the emancipation of a country, its environmental quality has undergone a significant transition during the development phases; Bangladesh is no exception. Bangladesh is facing a serious threat in the age of global warming, and climate change as the country is looking forward in achieving the SDGs by 2030. Yet, there is a dearth of study regarding the relationship among crucial macroeconomic drivers and ecological footprint (a proxy for environmental degradation). Under the circumstances, this study explores the effects of economic growth, capital formation, urbanization, trade openness, energy use, and technological innovation on the ecological footprint by adopting the novel dynamic Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) simulations approach for Bangladesh, using annual frequency data from 1972 to 2017. Empirical results from the bounds test ascertained that there exists a long-run equilibrium association among the outlined variables. Furthermore, the novel dynamic ARDL simulation results revealed that Bangladesh is yet to achieve the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. It was observed that the Bangladesh economy is still at the scale stage of its economic trajectory, emphasizing economic growth relative to her environmental status. However, capital formation, urbanization, and energy use seemed to degrade environmental quality, while trade openness and technological innovation upgraded the environmental quality. Putting it more elaborately, a unit escalation in GDP per capita increases the ecological footprint by 0.829% in the long run, while a unit increase in energy consumption upsurges the ecological footprint by 1.074% and 0.761% in the long run and short run, respectively. As regards technology innovation, one unit increase in it cutbacks the ecological footprint by 0.596% in the long run. Furthermore, the frequency domain causality unveiled the long-run feedback effect between economic growth and ecological footprint. The study further presents possible recommendations that can sustainably address environmental issues, keeping the economy buoyant.

Financial and factor demand analysis of broiler production in Bangladesh.

Financial and factor demand analysis of broiler production has been estimated in this paper using a farm survey data of 210 farmers from four major broiler producing areas (i.e., Dhaka, Rajshahi, Mymensingh and Chittagong) of Bangladesh. Findings showed that broiler farming incurred most of its cost from its operating input, mainly feed. Broiler farming was financially profitable, but the performance of Mymensingh division was comparatively low, arising from a high unit cost of production and low unit price selling than the others. The net return was highest in Dhaka division, while Rajshahi division showed the highest ratio in returns on investment. However, in terms of cost (variable) and net return of broiler farming, no significant difference among the study areas was observed. The value of own price elasticity for feed, chick price, and labour price were negative and inelastic, which were -0.00249, -0.05718, and -0.13101, respectively. Besides, a complementary relationship was found between feed and day-old chick and feed and labour while day-old chick and labour were substitutes. The study also revealed that cross price elasticity was highly inelastic, and changes in the prices of inputs did not result in massive changes in the quantity demanded of other inputs for broiler farming.