Seminar on ‘Prospects of Wi-MAX and 3G in Bangladesh’ held at BRACU

http://thedailystar.net/campus/2008/10/03/feature_bracu.htm

A seminar titled ‘Prospects of Wi-MAX and 3G in Bangladesh’ was held at BRAC University on the 19th of October. Organized by the IEEE Student Branch at the university, the main speaker at the seminar was Mohammad Refaul Karim, Assistant Manager in the department of Transmission Planning of Banglalink (Orascom Telecom Bangladesh Ltd). Prior to working in Banglalink, he had also worked in Grameen Phone Ltd. as a System Engineer and at BRAC University as a Lecturer.

Mr. Karim, in his speech, explained in details on how Wi-MAX and 3G networks are set up and the obstacles faced in doing so. He also talked about the impacts these two new wireless broadband technologies are likely to bring about in the ICT Sector of Bangladesh.

After the interactive seminar, the students, many of who are budding engineers, got the opportunity to talk in person with Mr. Karim about different technical and career related issues.

[University World News] BANGLADESH: Responding to global challenges

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=2008102409435588
The Asia Regional Higher Education Summit was held in Dhaka earlier this month with a view to expanding innovative approaches to teaching, research, technology transfer and business development in higher education. Attended by senior educationists from across the world, the four-day summit proposed a range of ideas for the development of key sectors and how higher education could play a role in this.

The summit was organised by USAID in association with the University of Dhaka and Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. The first of its kind in Asia, the summit called for stronger partnerships among public and private institutions across the globe to face the emerging challenges.

Around 150 university presidents and vice-chancellors, senior executives of businesses and foundations and government officials participated in the summit. Titled Higher education’s response to global challenge, speakers at the inaugural session listed terrorism, food shortages, energy deficiency and poverty as the major challenges facing the world – and that higher education and innovative thinking could help tackle them.

Education adviser Dr Hossain Zillur Rahman, speaking as the chief guest at the inaugural function, said, “Degradation of ecology, population, rapid urbanisation and poverty are the major issues in the case of Bangladesh.

“It is of immense importance that the universities of Bangladesh get linked with those of other countries for more collaboration in researches and innovations… with public and private universities taking the opportunities of partnerships to achieve excellence.”

Rahman said it was not only partnership in terms of resources but for sharing experiences and mobilising alumni of the educational institutions which empowered institutions. So far such initiatives had not been significant.

A key focus should be the ethical issue – that is, to uplift the underprivileged, he said, adding, “This is a bigger social support.”

At the opening ceremony, US Ambassador James F Moriarty said higher education institutions made vital contributions to national and international development. In many ways, the American higher education community represented the US traditions of enterprise, pluralism, diversity, compassion and humanitarianism, Moriarty said.

In recent years, traditional relationships between American and European higher education institutions had expanded to include Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. This expansion included the formation of stronger and more prevalent linkages with multinational corporations, non-government organisations and foundations.

“I firmly believe that these trends will contribute significantly to reducing global poverty in the coming years,” Moriarty said.

USAID Bureau of Asia Acting Assistant Administrator Mark Ward in his keynote address said American aid from the private sector to the developing world was now much more than that of government aid. This called for partnerships in terms of higher education and ways needed to be found how national and multinational corporations could be partnered for the development of higher education systems and research.

Thomas Farrell, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Education and Cultural Affairs, said America was keen to extend higher education programmes to Asian countries, including Bangladesh, to help them face global challenges such as food security, disaster management and poverty reduction.

“The number of visas issued to Bangladeshi students has increased recently,” Farrell said. “We welcome them… we want to see more students.”

The US may award five more Fulbright scholarships a year to Bangladeshi students in the areas of food security and disaster management, he added. At present, America allocates up to 20 scholarships to Bangladeshi students and sends 14 to 16 academics for teaching or research to Bangladesh.

The summit focused on four areas: food security, women’s entrepreneurship, teacher training and natural disaster management.

“Higher education has no alternatives. The US, therefore, internationally develops programmes and facilitates individuals and institutions for better education and research,” Farrell said while talking to reporters on the sidelines of the summit.

Dhaka University Vice-chancellor Professor SMA Faiz, who moderated a session on building innovative higher education partnerships, said the summit had discussed ways Asian universities and the US could strengthen partnerships. These could be with the private sectors, including national and multinational corporations, Faiz said, adding that representatives of Microsoft, Intel and the Aga Khan Foundation had already extended their support to tertiary education.

“The academics of various countries are sharing their experiences. This is a great scope for partnership,” he said.

A participant suggested preparing a directory of the universities in Asia and the US to facilitate sharing of the best practices that contribute to excellence in education.

The summit ended on a successful note with proposals for linking higher education more with the growing challenges in today’s world. The successful implementation of these plans is expected to pave the way for a better and more peaceful future.

Tech Wise [26th October, 2008]

http://thedailystar.net/campus/2008/10/03/tech.htm

Motorola Aura arrives

Love it or hate it, you have to respect Motorola for loosening the reins of design and announcing the premium Aura handset. Inspired by high end watches, the phone’s switch blade design alone is driven by over 200 parts130 of them ball bearings used to open the handset up to an estimated 100,000 times before failure.

The display is the product of fine crafting as well. Just 1.55-inches in diameter, this circular cellphone screen features 16 million colors and 300 dpi clarity, plus it’s coated with 62-carat sapphire crystal to prevent scratching.

Internally, the phone is quad band with GPRS and EDGE featuring 7.3 hours of talk time, 2GB of internal memory, AGPS and 2MP camera. And when it goes on sale December 4th (USA), it will carry the hefty pricetag of $2,000 (approx. 140,000 BDT)!!

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A (very expensive) Ferrari Hydroplane Replica!!

Fans of classic speedboats can now re-enact one of the most exciting races ever in their backyard pool with the remote controlled Ferrari Arno XI Hydroplane. The boat is a 1:10 replica of the Arno XI, which zoomed to a 1953 record-shattering 150.49mph! It’s almost 3 feet in length, weighs 16 pounds and can be controlled from up to 500 feet away for 30 minutes per two-hour charge.

The price for playing with the dreamboat of the 1950s is $2000 as well (approx. 140,000 BDT).

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Casio’s EX-FH20, the “Budget” Super-Slow-Motion Cam

Here’s the all-new $600 (approx. 42,000 BDT) EX-FH20 Super-Slow-Motion Camera from Casio. It definitely looks like a winner. Slightly slimmer than the earlier model, it also has a cleaner UI making it easier for a novice to use. 1000fps slo-mo video works well, and the 40fps burst mode also has good performance prerecording images in order to capture the perfect moment, even if you have a slow trigger finger. It is expected to be available in US markets soon.

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The Asus Eee S101, Slim and Air-y..

The Asus Eee S101 seems to be the prettiest looking netbook since the birth of the category. It’s 2.2 lbs., extremely light and thin, and the chrome finish on the trackpad area is much better looking than the generic plastic of similar models. The 10.2-inch matte screen is compact without straining your eyes, and the keyboard feels bigger than the original Eee’s.

Information & Image Source: Gizmodo Website

[StarTech] TechViews – Computers that understand how you feel

http://thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=60012

Technological marvels continue to amaze us everyday and this news is no exception! A navigation system able to provide fast emergency services while at the same time taking into consideration human stress; this is an example of a complete new type of dialogue system developed by a PhD candidate at the University of Twente (Netherlands), Trung Bui. His dialogue system recognizes the user’s emotions and is then able to react to them.

Dialogue systems are basically computer systems which communicate with humans and which are used especially for information provision such as in the speaking computer that provides important travel information. Normally, these computers do not take human emotions into account even though this is an important component of human interaction. The problem with human emotions is that they are often difficult to interpret, and that is especially true for a computer, which basically is, nothing more than a machine!

Raising one’s voice can, for example, indicate enthusiasm but it can also be a sign of anger. Therefore, we require extra information to be sure which of the two emotions is present. Human beings are trained to combine various types of information (which may sometimes be quite vague) and still be able to draw the correct conclusions. Dealing with uncertainties is however difficult to program into computer software.

Bui developed a dialogue system that, unlike others, could take emotions into account. To do this, he used a mathematical technique developed in the 1960s for controlling factory processes called Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP).

He demonstrated that this technique was suitable for integrating the user’s emotions into a dialogue system because it could deal with uncertainties. The method performs better than existing systems as long as it is tested with small-scale dialogue problems.

However, for larger problems the method requires too much calculating power. That is why Bui developed a hybrid strategy which combines the Dynamic Decision Network (DDN) technique with POMDP. In contrast to the latter, the DDN-POMDPs split dialogue systems into two levels. They make a choice between looking far ahead and seeing whether the necessary calculating power is actually available.

To illustrate the effectiveness of the DDN-POMDP, Bui had applied it to a navigation system for emergency services that took the stress experienced by the user into account. The navigation system receives input from a separate stress module that measures an emergency worker’s stress levels, taking these into account when the user is in communication with the system. Whenever the user’s stress levels become raised, the system will anticipate, for example, that the user is more likely to make mistakes and for that reason will request confirmation more often.

Spotlight: Asia Regional Higher Education Summit

http://thedailystar.net/campus/2008/10/02/camspotlight.htm

Higher Education’s Response to Global Challenges

“The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.” –Rabindranath Tagore

The Asia Regional Higher Education Summit was recently held in Dhaka between October 6-9 with a view to expanding innovative approaches to teaching, research, technology transfer and business development in higher education. Attended by senior educationists from all across the world, the four-day summit proposed a range of ideas for the development of key sectors and how higher education could play a role in it. The summit was organized by USAID in association with the University of Dhaka and Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.

This summit, the first of its kind in Asia, called for stronger partnerships among public and private institutions across the globe to face the emerging challenges. Around 150 university presidents and vice chancellors, senior executives of businesses and foundations and government officials participated in the summit titled “Higher Education’s Response to Global Challenges.”

Speakers at the inaugural session termed terrorism, food shortages, energy deficiency and poverty the major challenges that the world is undergoing today, saying that it is higher education and innovative thinking that can help face these challenges.

Education Adviser Dr Hossain Zillur Rahman, speaking as the chief guest at the inaugural function, said, “Degradation of ecology, population, rapid urbanisation and poverty are the major issues in the case of Bangladesh. It is of immense importance that the universities of Bangladesh get linked with those of other countries for more collaboration in researches and innovations, he said, urging both the public and private universities to take the opportunities of partnerships and achieve excellence. ”

Asian University of Women in Chittagong is an excellent example of partnership at regional level, he added.

The Education adviser also said that it is not only the partnership in terms of resources, but for sharing experiences and mobilising alumni of the educational institutions, which empower the institutions. But so far such initiatives have not been touched upon in significant manner.

A key focus should be ethical issue that is to uplift the underprivileged, he said, adding, “This is a bigger social support.” Teachers’ training is another important area to be focused on.

The adviser said Bangladesh’s focus so far has been on primary education to build a foundation, but now it is also putting focus on higher education and is formulating a law for the private universities, a newly flourishing area of higher education in the country.

In the opening ceremony of the summit, US Ambassador to Bangladesh James F Moriarty was also present. He said higher education institutions make vital contributions to national and international development. In many ways, American higher education community represents the US traditions of enterprise, pluralism, diversity, compassion and humanitarianism.

In recent years, traditional relationships between the US and primarily European higher education institutions have expanded in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, he said, adding this expansion has included the formation of stronger and more prevalent linkages with multinational corporations, non-government organisations and foundations.

“I firmly believe that these trends will contribute significantly to reducing global poverty in the coming years,” the Ambassador said.

USAID Bureau of Asia Acting Assistant Administrator Mark Ward in his keynote said the US aid from private sector to the developing world now is much more than that of the official aid.

This calls for partnerships in terms of higher education as we, he said, adding that ways should be found out how the national and multinational corporations can be partnered for the development of higher education systems and researches.

Dhaka University Vice Chancellor Prof SMA Faiz and BUET Vice Chancellor Prof AMM Safiullah also spoke at the inaugural programme.

Thomas Farrell, US deputy assistant secretary of state for education and cultural affairs said that the US is keen to extend higher education programmes to Asian countries, including Bangladesh, to help face global challenges such as food security, disaster management and poverty reduction. “The number of visas issued to Bangladeshi students has increased recently. We welcome them… we want to see more students,”

The US may award five more Fulbright scholarships to Bangladeshi students a year in the areas of food security and disaster management, he added.

Presently, the US awards 18 to 20 Fullbright scholarships to Bangladeshi students and sends 14 to 16 academics for teaching or researches to Bangladesh, according to a newspaper report.

The summit focused on four areas — food security, women’s entrepreneurship, and teacher’s training and natural disaster management — for discussion.

“Higher education has no alternatives. The US, therefore, internationally develops programmes and facilitates individuals and institutions for better education and research,” Thomas Farrell said while talking to reporters on the sidelines of the summit.

Dhaka University Vice Chancellor Prof SMA Faiz, who moderated a session on ‘Building Innovative Higher Education Partnerships’, said the summit discussed elaborately on the ways the universities in Asia and the US can strengthen partnerships.

These partnerships can surely be with the private sectors, including the national and multinational corporations, he said, adding that representatives of Microsoft, Intel, Aga Khan Foundation have already extended their support to the tertiary education.

“The academics of various countries are sharing their experiences. This is a great scope for partnership,” he said, adding that the summit will surely open new avenues of stronger collaboration.

A participant suggested preparing a directory of the universities in Asia and the US to facilitate sharing of the best practices that contribute to the excellence in education.
BRAC Executive Director Mahabub Hossain at a session on food security said developing high yielding varieties of crops is a challenge in the agriculture sector, as arable land is declining in countries like Bangladesh.

However, generating more employments with better pay for poor people to ensure food security is a greater challenge in Bangladesh, he added.

All in all, the summit ended on a successful note with proposals for associating higher education more to the growing challenges in today’s world. The successful implementation of these plans is expected to pave the way for a better and more peaceful future.

Tech Wise [19th October, 2008]

http://thedailystar.net/campus/2008/10/02/tech.htm

Fryer Spins Fried Food To Knock Out Fat

Rejoice, culinary neophytes everywhere! George Foreman, a former boxer turned kitchen gadget man has put out a deep fat fryer. You can now look forward to the smell of burning oil and deep fried everything coming soon from your nearby place.

Foreman’s Lean Mean Fryer uses a “Smart Spin” technology after the food’s been fried to allegedly whirl out 55% of the fat absorbed during frying using centrifugal force. Scientific explanation behind this claim has not yet been given, but for anyone who’s interested, this cooking masterpiece is now available in North America for $150 (approx. BDT 10,500 ).

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Lego Radiator’s now available

Winter is drawing near and it is time to prepare for it. The “Brick”the latest product designed for the Italian company Scirocco is out and apparently, a Lego motif actually makes for a thermally-efficient radiator.

The enhanced surface area of the blocks helps to spread heat more effectively, and each brick has a double plumbing connectionone for the heating system and one that allows you to snap together the bricks like actual Legos. How much all of this will cost to install is unknownbut nothing of this sort ever comes cheap!

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9,000-Square-Foot Spaceship Built in Germany

A new 9,000-square-foot, 3-story spaceship called “Second Solar” has just been constructed in the German city of Böblingen, designed to travel to distant solar systems to research inhabitable environments. It’s loaded up with “giant engines, a thermal shell to protect the crew and landing runners designed to cope with unknown surface conditions.”

Yes, and most importantly, it has been designed for children..

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America’s Biggest Universities Build 78-Terabyte Library!

23 of the biggest public and private universities in California, Michigan, Virginia, Illinois and other states of USA have announced a 2-million book online library made of 78 terabytes of information, 16 percent of which are free of copyright and ready for public consumption.

The Hathi Trustnamed in the spirit of wisdom, memory and strength after the Hindi word for “elephant”will be an amazing repository of data. Currently its bibliography, containing the physical equivalent of 1,703 tons of literature, is only partially searchable by University of Michigan and University of Chicago library sites, but “there is currently no single global interface to the body of content in HathiTrust repository.”

This highlights the real strains of safely storing the world’s intellectual propertywhile being able to serve it up for public consumption. The Hathi website laments that it’s still working on “a way that takes into account the large number of different sources of metadata and the different strategies each of the partners has for managing that information.”

*Here’s the whole list of universities participating in this project:
Indiana University
Michigan State University
Northwestern University
The Ohio State University
Penn State University
Purdue University
University of California Berkeley
University of California Davis
University of California Irvine
University of California Los Angeles
University of California Merced
University of California Riverside
University of California San Diego
University of California San Francisco
University of California Santa Barbara
University of California Santa Cruz
The University of Chicago
University of Illinois
University of Illinois at Chicago
The University of Iowa
University of Michigan
University of Minnesota
University of Wisconsin-Madison
University of Virginia

Information and image source: Gizmodo Website

[StarTech] TechViews – A voice activated mouse!

http://thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=59035

Students at the University of Washington (USA) have developed a voice activated mouse, according to a report in the Seattle Times. This could mean more accessible computers to people with disabilities.

Say “ahh” and the cursor zips toward the northeast corner of the computer screen. “Ooo” sends it shooting straight south. Want it to head southeast? Say “ohh.” To make the cursor do a circle or figure 8, let vowel sounds bleed into one another, like eee into ahh into aww and so on. You can make it hurry or slow by regulating the volume of your voice. To open a link, make a soft clicking sound.

So goes the University of Washington’s “Vocal Joystick” software, which uses sounds to help people with disabilities use their computers.

Its development has been a multidisciplinary task with faculty and students from several university departments electrical engineering, linguistics, computer science, as well as the Information School blending their expertise. (It is just one of a series of UW-generated assistive-technology projects ranging from enabling the blind to use touch screens to developing an alternative to the point-and-click method of computer navigation).

Researchers at the university have tested the joystick with spinal-cord-injury patients at the UW Medical Center and just finished another round of testing with 10 participants with varying levels of disabilities.

Susumu Harada, a computer- science and engineering graduate student, administered the tests, putting each subject through 12 hours of training. He evaluated how they learned producing the correct vowel sounds, memorized the directional patterns and manipulated cursor speed.

Sometimes, moving the mouse by voice seemed frustrating, even a bit tiring. If the operator was out of sync with his own sounds as recorded by the software, the cursor might speed past a target in one direction and go so slowly in the other that the subject would have to take a break to catch his breath.

Some sounds came easily. Some seemed a bit unnatural and strained. But when a subject caught the rhythm, the task was easy and natural.

There are several options for people who need accommodations in using computers, but the UW software is distinguished on several levels. For one, it doesn’t use standard voice-recognition technology. Instead, it detects basic sounds at about 100 times a second and harnesses them to generate fluid, adaptive cursor movement.

Vocal-joystick researchers are of the opinion that the system is easier to use because it allows users to exploit a large set of sounds for both continuous and discrete movement and to make visual adjustments on the fly.

The Vocal Joystick requires only a microphone, a computer with a standard sound card and a user who can vocalize. The team behind the study, funded by the National Science Foundation of USA, hopes to make a prototype available online this fall.

If this system is successful commercially as well, it is likely to come as a blessing for people with different types of disabilities who previously had restricted usage of the computer.

Eid 2008 ~ A Photo Story

http://thedailystar.net/campus/2008/10/01/eid_celebrations.htm

Eid Celebrations!!!
Bangladeshi Teachers & Students across the world celebrate Eid with fanfare …

There’s more to life than money and professional success. Let’s invest time in our children. It’s them who’ll be around when we won’t. These were our prayers for our daughter, Annapurna, during Eidul Fitr this year. And all children of Bangladesh. Child: Amira Labiba Chowdhury (Annapurna) Mother: Tahmina Labib Father : Asrar Chowdhury

Photo by: Nirjhar Sinha Rounaq National Bank Public School and College	Photo by: Syeda Nafisa Nawal (Child Heaven School Chittagong)

[StarTech] TechViews – Computer programming to be compulsory for schools?

http://thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=57972

Hold on to your seats people! This isn’t news yet, but is very likely to become so in the near future!

If Governor of California (USA), Arnold Schwarzenegger and the State Board of Education have their way, soon every California student will have to pass an algebra test to graduate from the eighth grade.

Although there is strong opposition to this decision, authorities argue that if the U.S. is to remain competitive in the 21st century, American students need to be brought up to par with those in the rest of the world. Math and science education is crucial to closing that gap.

On this note, Neil McAllister, of the Info World Magazine (US) is of the opinion that if modernising education is the name of the game, maybe it’s time that the govt incorporates fundamental computer literacy into the curriculum of U.S. public schools. If eighth graders should know algebra, by the tenth grade, they should be programming in Java!

But question is, is mandatory programming coursework somewhat like ‘putting the cart before the horse’? McAllister doesn’t think so. He says that it’s time we shed some of the popular prejudices and misconceptions surrounding computer literacy, many of which are simply remnants of a bygone era.

He goes on to say that, “When I was in school in the 1980s, movies like War Games and Tron popularised the image of the computer hacker as the inscrutable, impossibly intelligent outsider. Video games were cool, but if you actually made them, you were probably a socially-stunted nerd.”

However, all of that has changed. Today, every modern school-age kid does have access to a PC — and with it an e-mail address, MSN, Yahoo and Gmail accounts, a Facebook page, games, applications, and all the resources of the World Wide Web. Today our phones are digital, our cameras are digital, our music is digital, our DVD movies are digital, even our television is slowly turning all digital.

Like it or not, computing devices are everywhere. But the one thing that hasn’t changed is the idea that computer programming — real, deep-down, core computer literacy — is something for nerds, geeks, and outsiders. A common misconception!

Today’s kids have every incentive to delve into the world of programming. Whether it’s to trick out a Web page or interface with Facebook, programming has real-world applications that have relevance to kids’ lives.

Instead of labelling their enthusiasm for computers as ‘disruptive’ or ‘aberrant’ behaviour, it is high time that we should harness it as an educational tool. By integrating computer literacy into school curriculum from an early age, we would give students a learning experience that more accurately reflects the modern world around them.

The old-fashioned idea that computers allow students to cheat in their homework is also a common misconception that needs to be addressed. Computer programming languages are really just alternative ways to represent solutions to logical problems. Instead of the regular math exercises, why not challenge students with assignments that engage their creativity as well as their capacity for logical thinking?

Where traditional math problems can be unforgiving, programming languages like Python or JavaScript offer students interactive environments that encourage them to explore and experiment a lot. The immediate feedback they receive when they solve problems gives them individual encouragement and positive reinforcement — things that textbooks alone can never provide!

In Bangladesh, the Informatics Olympiad and other such events, encourages the young guns to experiment with programming languages, but making it a compulsory subject for all schoolgoers seems to be a far fetched plan at this point, but one that needs some considerable amount of thought!