Topics

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Faculty Sections / Following rules or showing humanity????

« on: April 08, 2019, 06:38:08 PM »

Humanity is a great virtue and is always encouraged. We always expect a person will always show humanity not only to other human being but also to all living being. But what happens when showing humanity will violate a certain rule? Should we still show humanity or we should refrain us? For example let us consider a patient who is admitted in a hospital due to some critical health issue. It is very common in out country that a group of people due to their extreme level of humanity and compassion will pay a visit to him. Sound normal and very appraising right? But don't you think it is actually going to be very bad for the patient to attend this much people in his current critical condition? He actually should take rest and be under the care of the hospital staff. Surely his information can be collected form the patient attendant rather than physically going to the hospital. It is really sad to see a large number of people making a hospital place crowded at every time. There are certain rules that people can visit at a particular time only (visiting hour) and can bring some selected staff to hospital but humanity is a the curse (in my opinion) that hinder us from following the rule. Another example could be sitting service bus. They have limited seat capacity. But everyday what we see is carrying more passenger than seat capacity. Here we also show humanity saying at office time they should carry more passenger, in rainy day they should carry more passengers. Very few people are seen arguing with the bus helper for this but most of them do it so that they can pay less for the ride. Almost nobody mention it wrong and violation of law. We have to understand if we continue to violate law to show humanity we will never be able to lead a civilized life. People will always have problems and there are specific ways to solve those. violating law to solve a problem will always linger the problem and eventually render it unsolvable. We have to build up the habit of following rules and for that many times we have to leave humanity behind. There are signs in Zoo "Don't feed the animal". It may look very kind to feed them, violating the rule, but who knows the food you are giving are harmful for them. The habit you are building in the animal will collapse them as they are becoming dependent on people. So may be we have to start thinking that what should we choose between humanity and rules.       

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Teaching & Research Forum / Innovation...... think different

« on: February 10, 2019, 05:21:24 PM »

What is innovation? From Wikipedia we find the following definition “ Innovation is a "new idea, creative thoughts, new imaginations in form of device or method. However, innovation is often also viewed as the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, unarticulated needs, or existing market needs.” So in the definition we don’t see the need for multimillion dollar lab or equipment for innovation. It is inevitable that for advanced modern research we need these but to be innovative what we need is a creative mind that can think out of box. Recently I had the opportunity to visit Yarn Expo in ICB where I found such an innovation. It was nothing but a zipper that the manufacturing company manufactured in inverted way. So now the fingers on which the zipper moves will be inside and the fabric will be at outside. A picture will be uploaded in comment so you can see them. As a result when you now zip it you will only see a smooth colorful fabric part. The aesthetic appeal is tremendous. This is what I would like to consider as an innovation. Thinking in an atypical fashion.

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Faculty Forum / Use of emergency siren in private vehicle..... A mess

« on: February 03, 2019, 01:01:51 PM »

Emergency siren used on emergency service vehicles such as ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks. These are quite loud and harsh. The use is quite understandable as they need to be heard form long distance so that other vehicle can make way for them. This is a world wide practice. In our country we have a terrible tendency of not allowing these vehicles to move easily by giving them side. One can argue that we don't have sufficient road of facilities to leave space for these vehicles. However this is not why I am writing this up. For long we are also seeing some private vehicles like car and motorbike also use these siren to create a panic among others so that they can achieve some privilege. As using siren here and there without any common sense is very common in our roads, these private vehicles fitted with emergency siren crate a havoc in the road. Unfortunately our law enforcement people are quite silent in this. They should understand these siren are only for emergency vehicles that also include law enforcement agencies. It is definitely illegal to use these siren in private vehicles and the owner must be punished for doing this. We can not show sympathy for ambulance/ fire truck because of lack of resources and civic sense. Wider spread use of emergency siren in private vehicle will make our mind set like this "surely this is a private vehicle and I am not giving him side"- while may be someone is fighting with death in the ambulance or a fire truck is desperately trying to reach somewhere to save someone.   

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Faculty Sections / A tale of a student

« on: January 21, 2019, 08:09:02 PM »

Being faculty member we everyday deal with out students. But being an adviser we get the unique opportunity to become more than a teacher; a friend, mentor. Students come to us with a happy face while secured a good result and also with a pale face to request to give him various permissions. Today I was talking to a student during his registration process. He was quite conserved. His result in previous semesters are not good but last semester showed a sign of improvement. He started to mention his family problems that was hindering him to concentrate in his study.

He has four sisters and all of them are married. His father is a farmer and usually sell their land to support him. But currently his sisters are creating issues while his father is trying to sell some of their land property. Their intention is to keep as much as possible property for their future profit. Neighbors also discourage his father saying he will waste all the money in Dhaka.

I don't know if the student is 100% truthful but I like to believe my students. I tried to motivate him and also found him motivated to do good in future. Many of our students have similar tale. A struggling tale. This is when they actually become my teacher showing various crude aspects of life. I start learning from them.........   

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Faculty Sections / How to improve human life..... A scattered thought

« on: January 11, 2019, 10:07:41 PM »

I was coming back from Sobhanbag mosque after the Zummah Prayer. My head was quite empty with some errant thought of the beggars sitting near the mosque door while I saw another beggar sitting on the footpath and eating some kind of junk food. Suddenly a question stroke me "how can we improve the quality of life of these people? Is there any way? How one person can contribute? Automatically some more thoughts came in. It seems to me that may be we need three things to improve the life of such a person, 1. Education, 2. Positive thought, and 3. Little some of money. I was analyzing in my mind how this three can change the quality of life of these people. First they need education. Not a bachelor degree in any discipline but a basic one, just enough to do the daily dealings. Then they need to lot of positive thoughts. Truly this is the hard part. Most of the below poverty line people has the basic education they need but they are lack of positive thought. They need to be provided with the thought that they can lead a more honorable, healthy and hygienic life if they take control of their life and start doing hard work to achieve at lest sufficient to rent a very small home and make them happy. They need to be provided with positive thought about all the possible ways they can earn sufficient money to take them from street to home. Then they need some money so that they can start something, may be selling chocolate in buses or tea in street. Again positive thought about their way of earning should be fed into them so that they don't just leave their work by seeing the hardship they have go through during day. Surely spreading your hand to people and sitting in the street is easier.

So what a person can do?? May be just pick a person and see if these three things work....     

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Faculty Forum / LED light- We should be more careful from now

« on: December 01, 2018, 04:52:32 PM »

LED lights are replacing traditional incandescent and CFL bulbs for their lower energy consumption and  miniature size. We see a wide variety of LED use in our day to day life like  bulb, rechargeable light, automobile lamp, electronic display, LED TV display, electronic banner, toys etc. We are using them a common household object ignoring their bad sides. The material that are used to produce LED are gallium arsenide (GaAs), gallium phosphide (GaP), or gallium arsenide phosphide (GaAsP). It also contains Lead, Arsenic, zinc or nitrogen, silicon, germanium, and tellurium. Many of these elements have severe health hazard issue. So we should be careful about using them specially in children toys. A study on the impact of LED lights are published here (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/led-lightbulb-concerns/) for further reading.

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Teaching & Research Forum / Teaching methodology, traditional to modern techniques. Episode: 1

« on: November 13, 2018, 09:23:32 PM »

Who is a Teacher? To answer this question one can mention: anyone who is intentionally or unintentionally educating someone about something. This something can range from very basic behavioral approach like a baby cries when in discomfort to very complex activities like designing space shuttle. In this context everything we see around us can be considered as a teacher. We all know the famous story of Robert Bruce who learned perseverance from a spider in a cave. However, this vague definition of "Teacher" is not going to be very helpful to discuss teaching methodology so let us consider a formal definition. According to wikipedia "A teacher (also called a school teacher or, in some contexts, an educator) is a person who helps others to acquire knowledge, competences or values." Though not mentioned here, a specific institution is necessary where the teacher will be employed and will teach a group of people called student to call him a teacher. So a teacher will teach a group of students various discipline of knowledge, values and make him a better person. How the teacher will teach these things? This is where the term teaching methodology comes into formation. Though around the world numerous researches are conducted regarding teaching methodology, this is still a new and less used concept in out country. We are still convinced that traditional teaching methodology is brought to us from heaven and it is unchangeable. We are still not ready to accept various newly developed concept or teaching model. What is this traditional teaching method? We don't need to look for this answer in books or internet. We just need to retrospect. How we were taught in our schools, colleges and even university? A common answer will be: we woke up in the morning, took the bag full of books and notebooks, went to the institution where our respected teachers came and recited some lectures with some chalk board work and then left. We were judged by a written exam where we were awarded for memorizing, understanding and for being capable of answering the questions in the exam paper. But definitely have the right to ask questions when we had difficulty in understanding but was the environment very helpful for asking questions? This is traditional style where the teaching is teacher centered. The teacher will decide how we will be taught and what will be taught. I am not blaming the system as it has showed its excellence for many years. But that doesn't mean it can not be modified for student betterment.   

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Faculty Forum / Strike from the transportation organization

« on: October 28, 2018, 01:57:12 PM »

Well, we are having a strike from the transportation organization for 48 hours all over the country. What is the reason behind it? Unfortunately some ridiculous protest against the recently enacted transportation law which enforce bail less arrest for the driver responsible for accident and death penalty if the driver found guilty. What's wrong in it? When the driver is irresponsible he not only put in risk the life of the passengers in his vehicle but also anyone, whether other vehicle or people on the street. We saw a lot of death in roads just because of irresponsible driving of the drives. Surely many times the people on the streets are responsible but one has to remember once you are holding the steering you have to be more responsible than a normal person walking on the road. Yet, if the strike was to enforce the government to practice stricter law for the people on the streets it could have some justifiable base but it is not such. However we are the common people and the final sufferer. But in this regard we should be cooperative so that the law that just got passed is not modified for the demand of some irresponsible people. We have a lot of ride sharing app now. It is costly but we can use it for 2 days easily. We have to take some responsibility too to help the government to stay strong against this kind of unacceptable demand.   

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Environmental Science and Disaster Management / Journal Reviewer

« on: January 12, 2013, 06:03:03 PM »

Follow the link below to know how to take care the journal reviewers.
http://scientificbangladesh.com/bn/news/%E0%A6%9C%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%B0%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%A8%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%B2-%E0%A6%B0%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%AD%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%89%E0%A6%AF%E0%A6%BC%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%B0%E0%A6%A6%E0%A7%87%E0%A6%B0-%E0%A6%AE%E0%A7%8B%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%AC%E0%A7%87%E0%A6%B2%E0%A6%BE-%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%B0%E0%A6%AC%E0%A7%87%E0%A6%A8-%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%AD%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%AC%E0%A7%87--%E0%A6%9C%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%AF%E0%A6%BC%E0%A7%87%E0%A6%A6-%E0%A6%8F%E0%A6%AE.-%E0%A6%8F%E0%A6%87%E0%A6%9A

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Environmental Science and Disaster Management / New Earth??

« on: December 19, 2012, 12:13:59 PM »

The news is so encouraging that sharing it directly from BBC news:

"The nearest single Sun-like star to the Earth hosts five planets - one of which is in the "habitable zone" where liquid water can exist, astronomers say.
Tau Ceti's planetary quintet - reported in an online paper that will appear in Astronomy and Astrophysics - was found in existing planet-hunting data.The study's refined methods of sifting through data should help find even more far-flung worlds.
The star now joins Alpha Centauri as a nearby star known to host planets.
In both those cases, the planets were found not by spying them through a telescope but rather by measuring the subtle effects they have on their host stars' light."

Skipping all the technical details how the star and planets were found and confirmed, we just can hope to get some other place adaptable for human or having friendly companion.

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Environmental Science and Disaster Management / Fabric in Aviation

« on: December 18, 2012, 05:24:47 PM »

Aircraft fabric covering is a term used for both the material used and the process of covering aircraft open structures. Early aircraft used organic materials such as cotton and cellulose dope, modern fabric-covered designs usually use synthetic materials such as Nylon and butyrate dope for adhesive. It might sounds astonishing but fabric coating is essential for aviation for the following reasons:
1. To provide a light airproof skin for lifting and control surfaces.
2. To provide structural strength to otherwise weak structures.
3. To cover other non-lifting parts of an aircraft to reduce drag, sometime forming a fairing.
So while dealing with textile technology we must rethink, since it is not only for our clothing.

 

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Law / Hartal

« on: December 04, 2012, 12:11:14 PM »

'Hartal' strike action in English is a very popular event to our political parties though its efficacy has declined a lot now a days due to excess use of it. In this subcontinent more or less everyone is familiar with Hartal but a few know about its origin in this subcontinent.
Hartal is originally a Gujarati expression signifying the closing down of shops and warehouses to make someone to understand the demand of common people. MK Gandhi (Father of the Indian Nation), who hailed from Gujarat, organized a series of anti-British general strikes which he called hartals, thereby institutionalizing it. The contemporary origins of such a form of public protest dates back to the British colonial rule in India.
This is how Hartal originated here. On those days it was very effective protest. Even in our per-liberation period Hartal was an effective weapon against the the West-Pakistan government.
Source: Wikipedia     

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Science Discussion Forum / Solar power

« on: April 25, 2012, 04:56:03 PM »

With time the availability of fossil fuels is decreasing and people are thinking about the renewable energy sources as the only available energy in future my be 2/3 decades later. Solar energy is one of the most potential sources of renewable energy which is coming under lime light day by day. Solar energy is basically used to generate electricity, room heating, water heating etc. Now a days generation of electricity is most important. Sunlight converted into electricity can be done either directly using photovoltaics (PV), or indirectly using concentrated solar power (CSP). Concentrated solar power systems use lenses or mirrors and tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight into a small beam. Photovoltaics convert light into electric current using the photoelectric effect. Now a days both system are use for large scale power production. The 354 MW SEGS CSP installation is the largest solar power plant in the world, located in the Mojave Desert of California. The main problem of this type of plant is storage of heat energy in daytime. 14 MW Nellis Solar Power Plant, installed 2007 in Nevada, USA use PV to produce electricity. The main problem of PV is it losses its efficiency from the very first day of its use.     

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Journalism & Mass Communication / Yellow Journalism

« on: April 09, 2012, 09:59:41 AM »

Journalism is always considered to be the safeguard of democracy and protector of the deprived people. But the term yellow journalism can jeopardize all the achievement of true journalism. It is a matter of great concern that to catch the leading position in the world of journalism some giant News channel & Newspaper publish fictitious sometime biased news and even sometimes hack the privacy of common people. The satellite channel Sky News (Britain) owned by Rupert Murdoch has second time authorized its journalists to hack in public mail and other personal document. Though its a potentially abashing revelation but Sky News is saying that they are doing this to protect human rights. To support their cause the put some examples like buying a Uzi sub-machine gun from black market and entering into a restricted area in Heathrow airport by its journalists to show how easily illegal weapon can be bought in UK or how poor the security system is. But its certainly a matter of argument whether it is legitimate to violate a rule to show the weakness of a rule.

Source: USA Today

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Science Discussion Forum / Longer life span.....Another factor that impact

« on: January 15, 2012, 01:34:20 PM »

Immortality has been fascinating human being from the very first death of human. People throughout the course of time tried in various ways to gain immortality or at least to increases his life span. Its no wonder that scientists from ancient time to the present have involved themselves in this kind of research. No doubt that science has overcome many diseases that caused death in some few days back but the key to prolonged life or immortality is till unobtainable. Recently scientists at Glasgow University say they have found a key genetic indicator of how long an individual will live.They say the lengths of tiny pieces of DNA called telomeres indicate whether a young creature is likely to live long into old age.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere (For some information about telomere)

Now scientist are trying to find why the length of telomere usually varies? Is it possible to stretch them to get prolonged life?
Their ans might bring a breakthrough in our life span.