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Topics - SSH Shamma

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1
A Bangladeshi student won a bronze medal today on the last day of International Robot D Challenge in South Korea.

Quazi Mostahid Labib, a student of Chittagong Grammar School (Dhaka branch), won the bronze medal in ‘Robot in movie’ category of the competition.

His achievement came after another Bangladeshi student, Rafihath Saleh Chowdhury, won a gold medal in ‘Robo Scholar Challenge’ category of the same event yesterday.

Rafihath, a student of Jalalabad Cantonment English School and College in Sylhet, also won the technical award in the same event today.

Tafsir Tahrim, another student of Chittagong Grammar School (Dhaka branch) and Bangladesh’s third competitor in the event, also won technical award in ‘Mission Challenge’ today.

The technical award is the fourth position after gold, silver and bronze which is also very prestigious, said Professor Dr Lafifa Jamal, president of Bangladesh Robot Olympiad.


Full News: https://www.thedailystar.net/science/bangladeshi-student-wins-bronze-in-international-robotics-challenge-1807000

2
A team from Child Health Research Foundation (CHRF) has successfully completed the genome sequencing of the SARS Cov-2 virus in Bangladesh.

The announcement came late last evening in a press release provided by CHRF. SARS Cov-2 is the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.

"We completed genome sequencing of the virus a few hours ago," confirmed Dr Senjuti Saha, the scientist who led the team of three. Other members of the team are: Roly Malaker and Md Saiful Islam Shajib. Dr Senjuti's father, eminent microbiologist and executive director of the organisation Dr Samir Kumar Saha, also gave leadership to the team.

Genome sequencing is the process of identifying what nucleotides -- the basic building block of DNA and RNA -- are present in a certain cell and in what order.

"The SARS Cov-2 virus cells contains RNA. RNA is made of four bases or 'letters' -- A (adenine), U (uracil), G (guanine), and C (cytosine). The virus is made up of about 29,000 letters and we had to figure out what the sequence was," explained Dr Senjuti.

Full News: https://www.thedailystar.net/bangladeshi-scientists-complete-genome-sequencing-coronavirus-1902190

3
Google's transit predictions, which use aggregated and anonymized Location History data, have been available since last year. But while Maps previously just told users how busy they could expect a train to be at certain times, now it tells them how busy the train is right now.

Maps is also adding a similar feature for when you're ordering food through the app, with expected wait and delivery times as well as live order status.

With cases rising alarmingly fast in the U.S. as well as the UK, public transport is a necessity for many, like the essential workers keeping people alive, fed, and safe. So to keep yourself and others healthy, wear your mask, stay as far from others as possible, and when possible, wait for a less crowded train or bus.

Source: https://mashable.com/article/google-maps-public-transit-crowded-real-time/

4
Software Engineering / Scientists redefine the kilogram
« on: April 16, 2019, 07:35:15 PM »
The kilogram is getting an update.

No, your bathroom scales won't suddenly become kinder and a kilo of fruit will still weigh a kilo. But the way scientists define the exact mass of a kilogram is about to change.

Until now, its mass has been defined by the granddaddy of all kilos: a golf ball-sized metal cylinder locked in a vault in France. For more than a century, it has been the one true kilogram upon which all others were based.

No longer.

Gathering in Versailles, west of Paris, governments are expected on Friday to approve plans to instead use a scientific formulation to define the exact mass of a kilo. The change is expected to have practical applications in industries and sciences that require ultra-precise measurements of mass.

And it will mean redundancy for the so-called Grand K, the kilo that has towered above them all since 1889.
Made of a corrosion-resistant alloy of 90 percent platinum and 10 percent iridium , the international prototype kilo has rarely seen the light of day. Yet its role has been crucial, as the foundation for the globally accepted system for measuring mass upon which things like international trade depend.

Three different keys, kept in separate locations, are required to unlock the vault where the Grand K and six official copies — collectively known as “the heir and the spares” — are entombed together under glass bell-jars at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, in Sevres on the western outskirts of Paris.

Founded by 17 nations in 1875 and known by its French initials, the BIPM is the guardian of the seven main units humanity uses to measure its world : the meter for length, the kilogram for mass, the second for time, the ampere for electric current, the kelvin for temperature, the mole for the amount of a substance and the candela for luminous intensity.

Of the seven, the kilo is the last still based on a physical artifact, the Grand K. The meter, for example, used to be a meter-long metal bar but is now defined as the length that light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458th of a second.

 “This, if you like, is a moment of celebration because it's like the last standard remaining from 1875 that will finally be replaced by new innovation,” Martin Milton, the BIPM director, said in an Associated Press interview. “Everything else has been recycled and replaced and improved. This is the last improvement that dates back to the original conception in 1875. So that's a tribute to what was done in 1875, that it's lasted this long.”

Source: https://www.thedailystar.net/science/news/quantum-leap-mass-science-redefine-the-kilogramme-metric-unit-measurement-1659937

5
A rocket carrying a satellite on a mission to deliver the world's first artificial meteor shower blasted into space today, Japanese scientists said.

A start-up based in Tokyo developed the micro-satellite for the celestial show over Hiroshima early next year as the initial experiment for what it calls a "shooting stars on demand" service.

The satellite is to release tiny balls that glow brightly as they hurtle through the atmosphere, simulating a meteor shower.

It hitched a ride on the small-size Epsilon-4 rocket that was launched from the Uchinoura space centre by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) this morning.

The rocket carried a total of seven ultra-small satellites that will demonstrate various "innovative" technologies, JAXA spokesman Nobuyoshi Fujimoto told AFP.


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The Epsilon-4 rocket lifts off from the Uchinoura space centre by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in Kagoshima prefecture on January 18, 2019. A rocket carrying a satellite on a mission to deliver the world's first artificial meteor shower blasted into space on January 18, Japanese scientists said. A start-up based in Tokyo developed the micro-satellite for the celestial show over Hiroshima early next year as the initial experiment for what it calls a "shooting stars on demand" service. Photo: AFP
By early afternoon, JAXA confirmed all seven satellites had successfully been launched into orbit.

"I was too moved for words," Lena Okajima, president of the company behind the artificial meteor showers, told the Jiji Press agency.

"I feel like now the hard work is ahead."

The company ALE Co Ltd plans to deliver its first out-of-this-world show over Hiroshima in the spring of 2020.

The satellite launched today carries 400 tiny balls whose chemical formula is a closely-guarded secret.

That should be enough for 20-30 events, as one shower will involve up to 20 stars, according to the company.

ALE's satellite, released 500 kilometres (310 miles) above the Earth, will gradually descend to 400 kilometres over the coming year as it orbits the Earth.

Worldwide meteor shower shows             
The company plans to launch a second satellite on a private-sector rocket in mid-2019.

ALE says it is targeting "the whole world" with its products and plans to build a stockpile of shooting stars in space that can be delivered across the world.

When its two satellites are in orbit, they can be used separately or in tandem, and will be programmed to eject the balls at the right location, speed and direction to put on a show for viewers on the ground.

Tinkering with the ingredients in the balls should mean that it is possible to change the colours they glow, offering the possibility of a multi-coloured flotilla of shooting stars.

Each star is expected to shine for several seconds before being completely burned up -- well before they fall low enough to pose any danger to anything on Earth.

They would glow brightly enough to be seen even over the light-polluted metropolis of Tokyo, ALE says.

If all goes well, and the skies are clear, the 2020 event could be visible to millions of people, it says.

Okajima has said her company chose Hiroshima for its first display because of its good weather, landscape and cultural assets.

The western Japan city rose from the ashes after the 1945 US atomic bombing and faces the Seto Inland sea where the floating gate of Itsukushima Shrine is.

ALE is working in collaboration with scientists and engineers at Japanese universities as well as local government officials and corporate sponsors.

It has not disclosed the price for an artificial meteor shower.

For details: https://www.thedailystar.net/science/news/japanese-satellite-launch-deliver-artificial-meteors-1689421

6
Software Engineering / China moon rover wakes from nap
« on: April 16, 2019, 07:32:10 PM »
China's lunar rover got back to work on the far side of the moon Thursday after waking from a five-day hibernation, its official social media page announced.

"Afternoon nap is over, waking up and getting moving," the Yutu-2 (Jade Rabbit-2) posted on the Twitter-like Weibo.

The rover on last Saturday went into standby mode to protect itself from temperatures reaching towards 200 degrees Celsius (390 degrees Fahrenheit), the China Lunar Exploration Program under the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said.

The 140-kilogram (308-pound) rover has since resumed activities, which will include taking a picture of the front side of the lander and exploration missions.

The Chang'e-4 mission -- named after a moon goddess -- made the world's first soft landing on the moon's far side on January 3.

The rover, named after the moon goddess's pet rabbit, successfully separated from the lander and drove onto the moon's surface last Thursday.

Beijing is pouring billions into its military-run space programme, with hopes of having a crewed space station by 2022, and of eventually sending humans on a lunar mission.

This is the second Chinese probe to land on the moon, following the Yutu (Jade Rabbit) rover mission in 2013.

China's space agency has said the mission "lifted the mysterious veil" from the far side of the moon, which is never seen from Earth, and "opened a new chapter in human lunar exploration".

Unlike the near side of the moon that offers many flat areas to touch down on, the far side is mountainous and rugged.

The moon is "tidally locked" to Earth in its rotation so the same side is always facing Earth.

The Chang'e-4 probe is equipped with instruments developed by scientists from Sweden, Germany, and China to study the lunar environment, cosmic radiation and the interaction between solar wind and the moon's surface, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Chang'e-4 landed within the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) Basin, the largest and deepest impact crater in the solar system.

Scientists have said it is a key area for solving several unknowns about the moon, including its internal structure and thermal evolution.

For details: https://www.thedailystar.net/science/space-science/news/china-moon-rover-jade-rabbit-wakes-nap-1686115

7
Software Engineering / ‘Smart farming’ plows ahead in Japan
« on: April 16, 2019, 07:30:06 PM »
“Smart farming,” which utilises cutting-edge robotics and artificial intelligence, could hold the key to an agricultural resurgence in a nation of graying farmers and a general population reluctant to toil in the soil.

Major agricultural machinery makers are already pouring resources into developing new equipment, and the Japanese government is planning experiments to test self-driving tractors and other technologies at about 50 model farms starting next fiscal year.

Building a better tractor

A new robotic tractor was unveiled Jan. 15 at a research firm run by the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, a state research and development institute based in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture. With no one in the driver’s seat, a worker standing off to the side used a tablet computer to make the tractor stop and go. When the tractor reached the edge of the field, it made a rapid U-turn. In no time at all the field was plowed.

The tractor’s motions can be monitored on a screen, which allowed the worker to operate two tractors simultaneously. Kubota Corp. has started test-marketing of a tractor that can plow both wet and dry fields. It uses satellite location data to move automatically at a high level of precision, with only a few centimeters of error.

“In the future, we will achieve ‘unmanned farming,’ in which AI will comprehensively analyze satellite, meteorological and other data so robot farm machines can operate automatically,” said Yuji Tomiyama, a Kubota managing executive officer.Yanmar Co. and Iseki & Co. are already marketing self-driving tractors.Another area of progress is in the use of small drones.

For details: https://www.thedailystar.net/science/farming/news/smart-farming-plows-ahead-japan-1697242

8
A text-generating "bot" nicknamed Tobi produced nearly 40,000 news stories about the results of the November 2018 elections in Switzerland for the media giant Tamedia -- in just five minutes.

These kinds of artificial intelligence programs -- available for nearly a decade -- are becoming more widespread as news organizations turn to them to produce stories, personalize news delivery and in some cases sift through data to find important news.

Tobi wrote on vote results for each of Switzerland's 2,222 municipalities, in both French and German, for the country's largest media group, according to a paper presented last month at the Computation + Journalism conference in Miami.

A similar automated program called Heliograf has enabled The Washington Post daily to cover some 500 election races, along with local sports and business, since 2014.

"We've seen a greater acceptance of the potential for artificial intelligence, or robo-journalism, in newsrooms around the world," said Damian Radcliffe, a University of Oregon professor who follows consumer trends and business models for journalism.

"These systems can offer speed and accuracy and potentially support the realities of smaller newsrooms and the time pressures of journalists."

News organizations say the bots are not intended to displace human reporters or editors but rather to help free them from the most monotonous tasks, such as sports results and earnings reports.

Jeremy Gilbert, director of strategic initiatives at The Washington Post, said Heliograf was developed as a tool to help the newspaper's editorial team.

"The Post has an incredible team of reporters and editors and we didn't want to replace them," Gilbert told AFP.

'Is this something we can automate?'                 
Gilbert said the bot can deliver and update stories more quickly as they develop, allowing reporters to concentrate on other tasks, and that reaction has been generally positive.

"The surprise was that a lot of people came up and said, 'I do this story every week; is this something we can automate?'" Gilbert said.

"These weren't stories that anyone wanted to do."

Similar conversations are going on in newsrooms around the world. The Norwegian news agency NTB automated sports reports to get match results delivered within 30 seconds.

The Los Angeles Times developed a "quakebot" that quickly distributes news articles on temblors in the region and also uses an automated system as part of its Homicide Report.

The Associated Press has been automating quarterly earnings reports for some 3,000 listed companies, allowing the news agency to expand from what had been just a few hundred, and this year announced plans with its partner Automated Insights to deliver computer-generated previews of college basketball games.

Rival news agency Reuters last year announced the launch of Lynx Insight, which uses automated data analysis to identify trends and anomalies and to suggest stories reporters should write.

Bloomberg's computerized system called Cyborg "dissects a company's earnings the moment they appear" and produces within seconds a "mini-wrap with all the numbers and a lot of context," editor-in-chief John Micklethwait wrote last year, noting that one-fourth of the agency's content "has some degree of automation."

France's Le Monde and its partner Syllabs deployed a computer program that generated 150,000 web pages covering 36,000 municipalities in the 2015 elections.

One advantage of using algorithmically generated stories is that they can also be "personalized," or delivered to the relevant localities, which can be useful for elections and sports coverage.

Investigative robo-reporter?
While news professionals acknowledge the limits of computer programs, they also note that automated systems can sometimes accomplish things humans can't.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution used a data journalism team to uncover 450 cases of doctors who were brought before medical regulators or courts for sexual misconduct, finding that nearly half remained licensed to practice medicine.

The newspaper used machine learning, an artificial intelligence tool, to analyze each case and assign a "probability rating" on sexual misconduct, which was then reviewed by a team of journalists.

Studies appear to indicate consumers accept computer-generated stories, which are mostly labeled as such.

A report prepared by researcher Andreas Graefe for Columbia University's Tow Center said one study of Dutch readers found that the label of computer-generated "had no effect on people's perceptions of quality."

A second study of German readers, Graefe said, found that "automated articles were rated as more credible," although human-written news scored higher for "readability."

Robot apocalypse?           
Even though journalists and robots appear to be helping each other, fears persist about artificial intelligence spinning out of control and costing journalists' jobs.

In February, researchers at the nonprofit center OpenAI announced they had developed an automatic text generator so good that it is keeping details private for now.

The researchers said the program could be used for nefarious purposes, including to generate fake news articles, impersonating others online, and automate fake content on social media.

But Meredith Broussard, a professor of data journalism at New York University, said she does not see any immediate threats of robots taking over newsrooms.

She said there are many positive applications of AI in the newsroom, but that for now, most programs handle "the most boring" stories.

"There are some jobs that are going to be automated, but overall, I'm not worried about the robot apocalypse in the newsroom," she said.

Courtesy: https://www.thedailystar.net/science/news/robo-journalism-gains-traction-shifting-media-landscape-1713001

9
You can now play the classic game Snake in the Google Maps app, just by hitting the top left menu button in the app, and selecting the option to play. If the option doesn't show up for you, try closing and reopening the Maps app.

Once you're inside the easter egg, you can select between different cities you'd like to play on, including Cairo, London, San Francisco, São Paulo, Sydney, and Tokyo.

A neat touch is that each city features a snake which is coloured like the trains from that particular location (except San Francisco, which is a tram), and objectives which are shaped like famous tourist destinations.

10
The increasing popularity of wearable devices has researchers concerned about the security of the internet of the body. Purdue University professors and students of electrical and computer engineering are working on a device that could provide a safer solution.

11
Google has been gradually adding and, more quietly, removing features from Gmail over the past few weeks. That momentum continued on Monday when Google announced some extensions to the popular email ciient's Smart Compose feature.
Desktop and Google Pixel 3 users know Smart Compose as the Gmail feature that completes sentences for you on occasion. Google is enhancing it so it can supposedly emulate your writerly voice, meaning it can better adapt to informal ways of greeting email recipients now.

It will even suggest subject lines now, according to Google. In addition to that, Smart Compose will now work in Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese alongside English.

12
Robotics and Embedded Systems / Tokyo 2020 Robot Project
« on: April 01, 2019, 09:56:30 PM »
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics will use robots to make it the most innovative games ever.

The Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games announced its new “Tokyo 2020 Robot Project.” Toyota’s Human Support Robot and Delivery Support Robot are being deployed to assist spectators in wheelchairs, carry food and other goods, guide people to their seats, and provide event information.

13
Nissan teamed up with DeNA to launch an on-demand, self-driving taxi service. 'Easy Ride' is a robo-vehicle mobility service that features concierge services on an in-car tablet. Use the accompanying app to request a ride, or schedule one in advance. The companies are currently testing out the service in Japan and plan to launch it as early as 2020.

14
To begin, there's zero evidence it's aliens.

  Mobile logo 2d675f03bcc8a93a7d09335159bda85a2cfee1e67a8649cd4a0bc639803afedc Share  Tweet
Scientists detect a repeating signal from deep space, but its origin is a mystery
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 The uniquely shaped CHIME telescope in British Columbia.
The uniquely shaped CHIME telescope in British Columbia.
IMAGE: CHIME
BY MARK KAUFMAN
JAN 10, 2019
To begin, there's zero evidence it's aliens.


But for just the second time, a team of astronomers detected a flash of repeating of radio waves emanating from beyond our Milky Way galaxy. Using a new, sprawling Canadian telescope dubbed CHIME — which is the size of six hockey rinks — scientists identified the short, repeating burst in the summer of 2018 and published their results Wednesday in the journal Nature. 

The source of these super distant signals, from some 1.5 billion light years away, is still largely a mystery. What's agreed upon is that for these radio waves to travel millions of light years and arrive at Earth as strong signals, they must have a profoundly potent origin — perhaps a powerful explosion in another galaxy.
"We don’t know what can cause an emission that is that powerful," Shriharsh Tendulkar, an astrophysicist at McGill University and study coauthor, said in an interview.

"We really don’t know what they are," added Marc Kamionkowski, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University who had no involvement in the study, in an interview. "There is good evidence they’re coming from outside the Milky Way."
While scientists have detected more than 60 instances of fast radio bursts — which last just milliseconds — this is just the second known signal coming from the same location.

Lots of things in space produce radio waves, and many of these signals hit Earth. "There are all sorts of radio waves arriving at all times," said Tendulkar. The sun is constantly sending radio waves through the solar system. And there's a number of powerful phenomena in the deep universe that blast radio waves into the cosmos — like black holes.

Scientists are certainly deep in thought about where these distant, quick bursts might come from.

"There is a lot of speculation in the astrophysical transient community about the origin of these events and a number of theories have been put forward to explain how they are formed," Kate Maguire, a researcher at the Astrophysics Research Center at Queen’s University Belfast who had no involvement in the study, said over email.

15
Software Engineering / Facebook is about to start investing in local news
« on: January 21, 2019, 08:51:26 PM »
Over the next three years, Facebook intends to donate $300 million to aid journalists and newsrooms in smaller U.S. cities.

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