বিভাগ/বিষয় নিরপেক্ষ

সুপারিশকৃত লিন্ক: অক্টোবর ২০১৪

আজকের লিন্ক

মুক্তাঙ্গন-এ উপরোক্ত শিরোনামের নিয়মিত এই সিরিজটিতে থাকছে দেশী বিদেশী পত্রপত্রিকা, ব্লগ ও গবেষণাপত্র থেকে পাঠক সুপারিশকৃত ওয়েবলিন্কের তালিকা। কী ধরণের বিষয়বস্তুর উপর লিন্ক সুপারিশ করা যাবে তার কোনো নির্দিষ্ট নিয়ম, মানদণ্ড বা সময়কাল নেই। পুরো ইন্টারনেট থেকে যা কিছু গুরত্বপূর্ণ, জরুরি, মজার বা আগ্রহোদ্দীপক মনে করবেন পাঠকরা, তা-ই তাঁরা মন্তব্য আকারে উল্লেখ করতে পারেন এখানে।
ধন্যবাদ।

আজকের লিন্ক

এখানে থাকছে দেশী বিদেশী পত্রপত্রিকা, ব্লগ ও গবেষণাপত্র থেকে পাঠক সুপারিশকৃত ওয়েবলিন্কের তালিকা। পুরো ইন্টারনেট থেকে যা কিছু গুরত্বপূর্ণ, জরুরি, মজার বা আগ্রহোদ্দীপক মনে করবেন পাঠকরা, তা-ই সুপারিশ করুন এখানে। ধন্যবাদ।

২২ comments

  1. মাসুদ করিম - ২ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (১২:১৪ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Joint Arab-Jewish art museum to open in Sakhnin

    Opening speeded up in order to create something positive that would defuse tensions in the wake of the Gaza war.

    A new museum with a collection of roughly 2,000 items of Palestinian Arab heritage and about 200 works of contemporary art will open in December in Sakhnin, an Israeli-Arab city in the lower Galilee.

    Established by Belu-Simion Fainaru, a Romanian artist who lives part of the year in Haifa, and Avital Bar-Shay, an Israeli artist, in cooperation with the Sakhnin municipality and its mayor, Mazin G’Nayem, the Arab Museum of Contemporary Art and Heritage (AMOCAH) will be located in Sakhnin’s Old City.

    Fainaru and Bar-Shay conceived, curated and ran the Mediterranean Biennale in Sakhnin in mid-2013.

    Although the museum has been under construction for some months, Fainaru and Bar-Shay said that work had been accelerated since Operation Protective Edge in order to counter rising tensions between Jews and Arabs with something positive.

    “During the military operation, the atmosphere in Sakhnin was tense, and there were demonstrations,” Fainaru said. “But now, people are waiting for something different, cheering and positive in Sakhnin too. That’s the significance of opening the museum. We come as Jews and cooperate with the people who live here, and seek to create artistic cooperation between Jews and Arabs.

    “This is a kind of marriage, since both sides want it. The museum is an opportunity for Jews and Arabs to meet. That is the goal. Every exhibition or thought creates a meeting between both sides, and this creates dialogue. Art is the meeting platform. All the decisions are made jointly, which is not always taken for granted and is not always easy.”

    The museum’s first exhibition will be entitled “Hiwar,” the Arabic word for “dialogue.” Curated by Amin Abu Raya of Sakhnin, it will present works of contemporary art alongside items of Palestinian heritage. The contemporary artists whose works will be shown include Marina Abramović, Larry Abramson, Jannis Kounellis, Abeer Atalla, Christian Boltansky, Mohammad Said Kalash, Johannes Vogel, Raed Bwayeh, Hermann Nitsch, Hoda Jamal, Mounir Fatmi, Mahmoud Badarneh, Buthaina Abu Melhem, Micha Ullman, Asad Azi, Dani Karavan, Nidal Jabarin, Tamir Lichtenberg, Meirav Heiman, Zuhdi Qadri, Rani Zahrawi and David Wachstein. Fainaru and Bar-Shay were the ones who chose the artists whose work would be displayed.

    According to Fainaru, besides the meeting of Jews and Arabs, the museum’s creators hope to enable the city’s residents to encounter art. “In Sakhnin, the museum will be located inside the neighborhood. People live near it. The intention is that the community will have access to it, that art will exist together with the residents and not just for its own sake. So it is also important to choose works that will not offend the residents’ sensibilities, since this is a very sensitive and volatile place. We don’t want to create opposition; we want to create success and attraction.”

    The museum will also launch a residency program that will invite Israeli and international artists to live there and create art works under its inspiration. The first artist to be invited was Johannes Vogel, who lives in Berlin and in Vienna. Although Vogel was supposed to arrive this summer, his arrival was postponed until November because of the war. He will be creating art works together with the inhabitants of Sakhnin.

  2. মাসুদ করিম - ৩ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (১০:০২ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    A quiet transition

    During the early phases of economic development most of the labour force of a country finds employment in agricultural and related activities. As other sectors grow with economic development, the share of the labour force engaged in agriculture starts declining, and that of industry and service sector rises. The shares of agriculture in Bangladesh in both total labour force and gross domestic product (GDP) have steadily declined (Table 1).

    Agriculture accommodated nearly four-fifths of the labour force during the early 1970s. By 2010 the share came down to less than one-half. Over three-fifths of GDP originated in the agricultural sector four decades ago, but now the share is about one-fifth. However, this decline in the importance of agriculture in the national economy did not mean a reduction either of agricultural output or of employment. On the contrary, the output of the agricultural sector grew quite robustly. Cereal output (rice and wheat) that stood at only 10 million tons in fiscal year (FY) 1972-73 increased three and half times by FY 2010-11. Employment in agriculture also increased substantially.

    The process of development in an agrarian economy with surplus labour was studied by Nobel laureate economist Arthur Lewis (1954). He hypothesised that the economy of a poor developing country, especially in Asia, was characterised by a large agricultural sector with ‘unlimited’ supply of labour. The presence of surplus labour put a cap on both agricultural and non-agricultural real wage. Market forces drove down the agricultural real wage to a subsistence level.

    The nascent industrial sector could draw on the pool of surplus labour at this low wage. The profits of industries were reinvested such that the productivity of labour increased in the industrial sector. But since the wage rate was tied to the agricultural sector it remained low, thereby raising the profit rate in the industrial sector.

    The higher profits were reinvested to further increase the capital stock, which raised the profitability of the sector. The process continued until the surplus labour was exhausted. Beyond this point, the industrial sector had to compete with the agricultural sector for labour which resulted in an increase in the real wage rate. Thereafter the expansion of either the industrial or the agricultural sector or both could be achieved only at the expense of higher wages. Lewis termed this stage of development as the ‘turning point’.

    There is some relevance of Lewis model for the economy of Bangladesh. Throughout the first three decades of its existence, its agricultural sector was dominated by subsistence farms and the supply of labour was plentiful. There is some evidence that agricultural wages hardly increased over the first three decades of Bangladesh’s existence. This is shown by the two real wage lines in Chart 1 below.

    There is some controversy regarding how the real wage index should be constructed. The controversy arises from the use of different deflators such as Consumer Price Index (CPI) or coarse rice price. Bangladesh Economic Review, published each year by the Ministry of Finance at the time of presenting annual budget, provide both nominal and real wage indices of hired labourers by several categories. However, Review’s agricultural real wage data are available only from FY 1977-78 and cease at FY 2008-09. The real wage graphs in Chart 1 were drawn by deflating nominal wage index data by GDP deflator and CPI data of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS). These data were re-estimated with respect to a single base year 1969-70 by using the growth rates of the nominal indices. The two series move very close together.

    The agricultural real wage suffered a very large drop in the aftermath of our liberation war. Between FY 1970-71 and FY 1974-75 the real wage declined by a whopping 43 per cent. A horrific famine had struck the nation in FY 1974-75 that resulted in the deaths of a very large number of people due to starvation and related causes. The very sharp decline in the real wage, caused largely by very large increases in the food prices, especially rice prices, and a paucity of employment opportunities, must have been the major contributor to the misery of the people.

    Agricultural real wage rose by fits and spurts since FY 1974-75, but it did not attain the pre-liberation level until FY 1992-93 according to the CPI adjusted real wage index. However, it fell below the pre-liberation level again in FY 1994-95 and did not rise above that level until FY 2002-03. Both indices indicate that the agricultural real wage rose above its FY 1969-70 level by FY 2002-03.

    The period of low agricultural wage coincided with the growth of the manufacturing sector led by readymade garment (RMG) industry. Large scale migration to overseas destinations for employment began during the second half of the 1970s. Both these developments greatly influenced the pattern of economic development of Bangladesh.

    The persistence of low wage greatly benefitted the growth of the RMG industry. Together with quotas and duty-free access, the low real wage afforded large profits for the RMG entrepreneurs. These were ploughed back into the industry such that the industry grew rapidly in terms of both turnover and employment. From almost a non-existent industry at the beginning of the 1980s, it grew into the second largest exporter of the world in about three decades. Total garment export in FY 2013-14 stood at US$24.5 billion. The industry now employs nearly 4.0 million workers, mostly female. Overseas employment increased tremendously with an estimated 9.0 million people, mostly unskilled labour, leaving Bangladesh to work overseas. Total remittances exceeded US$14 billion last fiscal.

    According to the Lewis model of economic development with surplus labour, agricultural wage can increase only if the industrial wage increases; that is, the driving force of the economy is the industrial sector. The real wage in the industrial sector suffered a greater decline relative to that of the agricultural sector in the wake of the liberation war. Agricultural real wage (CPI adjusted) declined by 34.4 per cent between FY 1971-72 and FY 1974-75. During the same period the industrial real wage declined by 56.2 per cent. The large reduction in the industrial real wage must have had a negative influence on the agricultural real wage. It was not until FY 1985-86 that the industrial real wage exceeded that in FY 1969-70.

    The most remarkable aspect of the real wage movement in agriculture is that for nearly three decades it moved up and down without showing any sustained increase such that the real wage in FY 2005-06 was barely higher than that in FY 1969-70. But since then there has been a rapid increase in the real wage; it increased by nearly one and half times within just five years since FY 2007-08. Never in the history of agriculture of Bangladesh was such a large increase achieved in such a short time. Importantly, the real wage increased continuously since FY 2004-05. At about this time the share of agriculture in employment fell below 50 per cent.

    This large and sustained increase in the agricultural real wage over the last eight years might be an indication of the exhaustion of surplus labour in agriculture. More intense cultivation of arable land, urban industrial growth, and in particular, overseas migration seem to have drawn off the surplus labour.

    It would seem that the economy had reached the ‘turning point’ of Lewis at about the middle of the first decade of the new millennium. If so, Bangladesh has moved out of the subsistence economy phase with ‘unlimited supply of labour’ to a competitive economy where any net increase in labour demand is likely to see an increase in the real wage rate. An expansion of employment in any sector would now require an improvement in productivity.

  3. মাসুদ করিম - ৭ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (১১:০১ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    Post by Masud Karim.

    Press Release

    2014-10-06

    The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award

    The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

    with one half to

    John O´Keefe

    and the other half jointly to

    May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser

    for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning
    system in the brain

    How do we know where we are? How can we find the way from one place to another? And how can we store this information in such a way that we can immediately find the way the next time we trace the same path? This year´s Nobel Laureates have discovered a positioning system, an “inner GPS” in the brain that makes it possible to orient ourselves in space, demonstrating a cellular basis for higher cognitive function.

    In 1971, John O´Keefe discovered the first component of this positioning system. He found that a type of nerve cell in an area of the brain called the hippocampus that was always activated when a rat was at a certain place in a room. Other nerve cells were activated when the rat was at other places. O´Keefe concluded that these “place cells” formed a map of the room.

    More than three decades later, in 2005, May-Britt and Edvard Moser discovered another key component of the brain’s positioning system. They identified another type of nerve cell, which they called “grid cells”, that generate a coordinate system and allow for precise positioning and pathfinding. Their subsequent research showed how place and grid cells make it possible to determine position and to navigate.

    The discoveries of John O´Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser have solved a problem that has occupied philosophers and scientists for centuries – how does the brain create a map of the space surrounding us and how can we navigate our way through a complex environment?

    How do we experience our environment?

    The sense of place and the ability to navigate are fundamental to our existence. The sense of place gives a perception of position in the environment. During navigation, it is interlinked with a sense of distance that is based on motion and knowledge of previous positions.

    Questions about place and navigation have engaged philosophers and scientists for a long time. More than 200 years ago, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that some mental abilities exist as a priori knowledge, independent of experience. He considered the concept of space as an inbuilt principle of the mind, one through which the world is and must be perceived. With the advent of behavioural psychology in the mid-20th century, these questions could be addressed experimentally. When Edward Tolman examined rats moving through labyrinths, he found that they could learn how to navigate, and proposed that a “cognitive map” formed in the brain allowed them to find their way. But questions still lingered – how would such a map be represented in the brain?
    John O´Keefe and the place in space

    John O´Keefe was fascinated by the problem of how the brain controls behaviour and decided, in the late 1960s, to attack this question with neurophysiological methods. When recording signals from individual nerve cells in a part of the brain called the hippocampus, in rats moving freely in a room, O’Keefe discovered that certain nerve cells were activated when the animal assumed a particular place in the environment (Figure 1). He could demonstrate that these “place cells” were not merely registering visual input, but were building up an inner map of the environment. O’Keefe concluded that the hippocampus generates numerous maps, represented by the collective activity of place cells that are activated in different environments. Therefore, the memory of an environment can be stored as a specific combination of place cell activities in the hippocampus.
    May-Britt and Edvard Moser find the coordinates

    May-Britt and Edvard Moser were mapping the connections to the hippocampus in rats moving in a room when they discovered an astonishing pattern of activity in a nearby part of the brain called the entorhinal cortex. Here, certain cells were activated when the rat passed multiple locations arranged in a hexagonal grid (Figure 2). Each of these cells was activated in a unique spatial pattern and collectively these “grid cells” constitute a coordinate system that allows for spatial navigation. Together with other cells of the entorhinal cortex that recognize the direction of the head and the border of the room, they form circuits with the place cells in the hippocampus. This circuitry constitutes a comprehensive positioning system, an inner GPS, in the brain (Figure 3).
    A place for maps in the human brain

    Recent investigations with brain imaging techniques, as well as studies of patients undergoing neurosurgery, have provided evidence that place and grid cells exist also in humans. In patients with Alzheimer´s disease, the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex are frequently affected at an early stage, and these individuals often lose their way and cannot recognize the environment. Knowledge about the brain´s positioning system may, therefore, help us understand the mechanism underpinning the devastating spatial memory loss that affects people with this disease.

    The discovery of the brain’s positioning system represents a paradigm shift in our understanding of how ensembles of specialized cells work together to execute higher cognitive functions. It has opened new avenues for understanding other cognitive processes, such as memory, thinking and planning.

  4. মাসুদ করিম - ৭ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (১২:৩০ অপরাহ্ণ)

    মক্কা আর মক্কা নেই মক্কা এখন ‘মক্কাহাট্টান’, সৌদি রাজবংশ আর লাদেন কন্ট্রাক্টরবংশের ক্ষমতা আর লোভের বলি হচ্ছে ইসলামের নবিদের শহর মক্কা।

    The rise of ‘Mecca-hattan’

    As a child, Osama al-Bar would walk from his home past Islam’s holiest site, the Kaaba, to the market of spice and fabric merchants where his father owned a store. At that time, Mecca was so small, pilgrims could sit at the cube-shaped Kaaba and look out at the serene desert mountains where the Prophet Muhammad once walked.

    Now the market and the homes are gone. Monumental luxury hotel towers crowd around the Grand Mosque where the Kaaba is located, dwarfing it. Steep rocky hills overlooking the mosque have been levelled and are now covered with cranes building more towers.

    “My father and all the people who lived in Mecca wouldn’t recognise it,” said al-Bar, who is now Mecca’s mayor.

    As Muslims streamed into Mecca for the annual Haj this year, they came to a city undergoing the biggest transformation in its history.

    Decades ago, this was a low-built city of centuries-old neighbourhoods. Over the years, it saw piecemeal renewal projects. But in the mid-2000s, the kingdom launched its most ambitious overhaul ever with a series of mega-projects that have reshaped Mecca.

    Old neighbourhoods have been erased for hotel towers and malls built right up to the edge of the Grand Mosque. Next to the Kaaba soars the world’s third tallest skyscraper, topped by a gigantic clock, which is splashed with coloured lights at night.

    “It’s not Mecca. It’s Mecca-hattan. This tower and the lights in it are like Vegas,” said Sami Angawi, an architect who has spent his life studying Haj. “The truth of the history of Mecca is wiped out… with bulldozers and dynamite. Is this development?”

    Critics complain the result is stripping the holy city of its spirituality. They also say it is robbing the Haj of its more than 1,400-year-old message that all Muslims are equal before God.

    Mecca is revered by millions of Muslims worldwide. They face the Kaaba every day in their prayers. The Grand Mosque is one of the few places in the world where Muslims of all stripes gather — Sunnis and Shiites, secular Muslims, mystics and hardliners.

    Overseeing Mecca is also a key source of prestige for Saudi Arabia’s monarchy. The past two kings have adopted the further title of ‘Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques’ to boost their status, referring to Mecca’s Grand Mosque and Muhammad’s mosque in nearby Medina.

    Now the city is being moulded to a particularly Saudi vision that bolsters the rule of the Al Saud royal family.

    Two forces shape that vision. One is raw, petrodollar-fuelled capitalism. Mecca’s planners are largely catering to wealthier pilgrims by focusing on construction of five-star hotels. Nearby pilgrims can shop at international chains, including a Paris Hilton store and a gender-segregated Starbucks.

    The other force is Wahhabism, the strict, puritanical interpretation of Islam that the Al Saud rulers elevated to the country’s official doctrine. In return, Wahhabi clerics staunchly back the monarchy. One tenet of Wahhabism is that Muslim tombs or sites connected to revered figures — even Prophet Muhammad — should be destroyed to avoid veneration of anything other than God. It’s the same zeal that has prompted the Islamic State to blow up shrines in Iraq and Syria.

    In Mecca, hardly any site associated with Muhammad remains. Many were destroyed in previous expansions of the Grand Mosque in the 1980s and 1990s, and the new development is finishing off much of what remains. In 2008, for example, the house of Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s successor, was razed to make way for a Hilton.

    The urban renewal is necessary, Saudi officials say, to accommodate Haj pilgrims whose numbers are expected to swell from around 3 million currently to nearly 7 million by 2040.

    The $60-billion Grand Mosque expansion will almost double the area for pilgrims to pray at the Kaaba. Around half the cost went into buying about 5,800 homes that had to be razed for the expansion, said al-Bar, the Mecca mayor. Domes and pillars dating back to rule by the Ottoman Empire are being pulled down to put up modern facilities.

    Another mega project is Jabal Omar, a hill on the mosque’s west side. The hill was levelled and construction of around 40 towers is underway, mostly for luxury hotels providing some 11,000 rooms. On the mosque’s south side stands the 1,972-ft (600-m) clock-tower skyscraper, part of a completed seven-tower complex that was built after tearing down an Ottoman fort on the site.

    Also underway is the Jabal Sharashif project, in which a slum that largely houses Burmese and African migrants is to be torn down to build a new neighbourhood for Saudis, along with hotels. A four-line metro system is planned for the city along with a high-speed rail line to the port city of Jiddah, where the area’s airport is located, and to Medina.

    The Grand Mosque’s expansion is being headed by the Saudi Binladin Group, which also built the clock tower. The Binladin family has been close to Al Sauds for decades and runs major building projects around the country. Al-Qaeda’s late leader Osama bin Laden was a renegade son disowned by the family in the 1990s.

    Speaking at a public forum in Jiddah in May, Nawaf Binladin said people are constantly asking if all this construction is needed. “This can be answered in one moment,” he said, flashing a picture of tens of thousands of worshippers praying in the street because there was not enough room inside the Grand Mosque.

    But many in the audience were not convinced. Saeed al-Ghamdi, a former Saudi diplomat, said he thinks greed is the main motivator. Muslims around the world have an “intimate bond” with Mecca, he said. “It is not a place for one businessman or one company.”

    Mecca’s planners didn’t have to build so close to the Kaaba, overwhelming the simple cube-shaped structure, said Irfan al-Alawi, a Saudi who heads the London-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation. “Already we are losing the spirituality,” he said. Pilgrims admire the clock tower instead of “looking at the Kaaba and admiring the house of God”.

  5. মাসুদ করিম - ৭ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (৭:০২ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Post by Masud Karim.

    Press Release

    7 October 2014

    The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2014 to

    Isamu Akasaki
    Meijo University, Nagoya, Japan and Nagoya University, Japan

    Hiroshi Amano
    Nagoya University, Japan

    and

    Shuji Nakamura
    University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    “for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources”

    New light to illuminate the world

    This year’s Nobel Laureates are rewarded for having invented a new energy-efficient and environment-friendly light source – the blue light-emitting diode (LED). In the spirit of Alfred Nobel the Prize rewards an invention of greatest benefit to mankind; using blue LEDs, white light can be created in a new way. With the advent of LED lamps we now have more long-lasting and more efficient alternatives to older light sources.

    When Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura produced bright blue light beams from their semi-conductors in the early 1990s, they triggered a funda-mental transformation of lighting technology. Red and green diodes had been around for a long time but without blue light, white lamps could not be created. Despite considerable efforts, both in the scientific community and in industry, the blue LED had remained a challenge for three decades.

    They succeeded where everyone else had failed. Akasaki worked together with Amano at the University of Nagoya, while Nakamura was employed at Nichia Chemicals, a small company in Tokushima. Their inventions were revolutionary. Incandescent light bulbs lit the 20th century; the 21st century will be lit by LED lamps.

    White LED lamps emit a bright white light, are long-lasting and energy-efficient. They are constantly improved, getting more efficient with higher luminous flux (measured in lumen) per unit electrical input power (measured in watt). The most recent record is just over 300 lm/W, which can be compared to 16 for regular light bulbs and close to 70 for fluorescent lamps. As about one fourth of world electricity consumption is used for lighting purposes, the LEDs contribute to saving the Earth’s resources. Materials consumption is also diminished as LEDs last up to 100,000 hours, compared to 1,000 for incandescent bulbs and 10,000 hours for fluorescent lights.

    The LED lamp holds great promise for increasing the quality of life for over 1.5 billion people around the world who lack access to electricity grids: due to low power requirements it can be powered by cheap local solar power.

    The invention of the blue LED is just twenty years old, but it has already contributed to create white light in an entirely new manner to the benefit of us all.

    ~ আমাদের নোবেল ~

    প্রতিবছর অক্টোবর মাস আসলেই সারা বিশ্বের বিজ্ঞানীদের বুকে ধুকপুক ধুকপুক শুরু হয়ে যায়।

    কারণ সেটা নোবেল জয়ের মাস।

    কার ভাগ্যে কবে শিকা ছিড়ে, কে জানে!

    খুব কাছ থেকে দেখা এমন একজন বিজ্ঞানী ছিলেন আমার পিএইচডির সময়কার ইউনিভার্সিটি অফ ইলিনয় এট আরবানা শ্যাম্পেইনের নিক হলোনিয়াক। তিনি ছিলেন লাইট এমিটিং ডায়োড বা LED এর আবিষ্কর্তা। নোবেল বাদে সব পুরস্কার পেয়েছেন, এটাই খালি বাকি। তাই অক্টোবর এলেই ধরা হয় উনি পাবেন হয়তো। কিন্তু এখনো এবারেও তার ভাগ্যে সেটা জুটলো না।

    কিন্তু জুটেছে নীল রঙের এলিডি বাতির আবিষ্কারক তিনজনের কপালে।

    LED বাল্বের নানা সুবিধা আছে, খুব ছোট, অনেক কম বিদ্যুৎ খরচ, আর আলো অনেক বেশি। কিন্তু নব্বই এর দশক পর্যন্ত ৩০ বছর ধরে গবেষণা করেও কেউ নীল LED বানাতে পারেনি। কেবল লাল সবুজই হতো। ফলে বাসায় ব্যবহার করার মতো সাদা আলোর জন্য LED বানাতে পারেনি কেউ। অনেকে তো এটাকে রীতিমতো অসম্ভব বলে রায় দিয়ে দিয়েছিলেন।

    কিন্তু জাপানের এক বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের দুইজন বিজ্ঞানী নব্বই এর দশকের শুরুতে অনেক খেটে খুটে নীল LED বাতি বানাবার কৌশল বের করলেন। তবে সেটা ঠিক সস্তায় সহজে বানানো যায় না। এগিয়ে এলেন এক ছোট্ট ইলেকট্রনিক্স কোম্পানির একজন প্রকৌশলী। বাঘা বাঘা বিজ্ঞানীরা “এইটা করা সম্ভব না” বলে যে ঘোষণা দিয়েছেন, তার তোয়াক্কা না করে তিনি বানিয়ে ফেললেন খুব সস্তায় নীল LED বাতি। আর সব গুলা প্রাথমিক রঙ দিয়ে সাদা আলোর বাল্ব বানাতে আর বাধা রইলো না।

    সেই নীল LED বাতির জয়জয়কার তখন থেকেই, সেটা নীল লেজার বানাতে, ব্লু রে ডিভিডি বানাতে, কিংবা অন্য নানা কাজে। আজকের LED টিভি থেকে শুরু করে LED বাল্ব, সেগুলার কোনোটাই সম্ভব হতো না, যদি এই দুইজন বিজ্ঞানী আর এক প্রকৌশলী তাদের স্বপ্ন থেকে যেতেন পিছিয়ে, “বাঘা বাঘা বিশেষজ্ঞ” দের কথাকে বিশ্বাস করে এই কাজ করা অসম্ভব, তা ভেবে বসতেন।

    অসম্ভবকে সম্ভব করাই, আপনার, আমার, মানুষের কাজ।

    আজ এই বিজ্ঞানী তিনজন পদার্থবিজ্ঞানে নোবেল পুরস্কার পেয়েছেন। নাগয়া বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের ইসামু আকাসাকি, হিরোশি আমানো, এবং বর্তমানে ইউনিভার্সিটি অফ ক্যালিফোর্নিয়ার সান্তা বারবারা ক্যাম্পাসের অধ্যাপক শুজি নাকামুরা।

    কিন্তু আমি আশা করছি অন্য।

    জাপানীদের চাইতে আমাদের মেধা তো কম নয়।

    গত ৬ বছরে দুইবার জাপানীরা পদার্থবিজ্ঞানের নোবেল জয় করেছে।

    আমরা করবো কবে? জ্ঞানে বিজ্ঞানে কবে জয় করবো দুনিয়াকে?

    মেধার তো অভাব নাই, তাহলে অভাবটা কী আত্মবিশ্বাসের, চেষ্টার?

    আসুন, আমাদের নিজেদের শোনাই, আর শিশুদের শেখাই, জোর গলায়,

    — অসম্ভবকে সম্ভব করাই আমাদের সবার কাজ। —

    ‪#‎এলোচিন্তা‬

  6. রেজাউল করিম সুমন - ৮ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (২:০০ অপরাহ্ণ)

    প্রয়াণ : ভাষাসৈনিক আবদুল মতিন
    (৩ ডিসেম্বর ১৯২৬ — ৮ অক্টোবর ২০১৪)

    ভাষা মতিনের জীবনাবসান

    অষ্টআশি বছরের জীবনের শেষ পর্যন্ত সাম্যবাদের লড়াই চালিয়ে চিরবিদায় নিলেন ভাষা আন্দোলনের অন্যতম সংগঠক আবদুল মতিন, সারা বাংলাদেশ যাকে চেনে ভাষা মতিন নামে।

    মস্তিষ্কে স্ট্রোক হওয়ায় গত দেড় মাসের বেশি সময় ধরে বঙ্গবন্ধু মেডিক্যাল বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় হাসপাতালের নিবিড় পরিচর্যা কেন্দ্রে (আইসিইউ) চিকিৎসাধীন ছিলেন বাংলাদেশের ওয়ার্কার্স পার্টির (পুনর্গঠিত) নেতা মতিন। গত ৪ অক্টোবর থেকে তাকে লাইফ সাপোর্টে রাখা হয়।

    বুধবার সকাল ৯টায় লাইফ সাপোর্ট খুলে নিয়ে সেখানেই তাকে মৃত ঘোষণা করা হয় বলে জানান হাসপাতালের নিউরোসার্জারি বিভাগের অধ্যাপক আফজাল হোসেন।

    দুই মেয়ের বাবা আবদুল মতিন পরিবারের সঙ্গে থাকতেন ঢাকার মোহাম্মদপুরে। তার জন্ম ১৯২৬ সালের ৩ ডিসেম্বর, সিরাজগঞ্জ জেলার চৌহালী উপজেলার ধুবলিয়া গ্রামে।

    হাসপাতালে চিকিৎসাধীন অবস্থাতেই নিজের দেহ তিনি দান করে দিয়ে গেছেন চিকিৎসা বিজ্ঞানের শিক্ষার্থীদের শিক্ষার জন্য, চোখ দান করে গেছেন সন্ধানীকে।

    তার মৃত্যুতে গভীর শোক প্রকাশ করে রাষ্ট্রপতি মো. আবদুল হামিদ বলেছেন, “তার মৃত্যুতে জাতি ভাষা আন্দোলনের একজন জীবন্ত কিংবদন্তীকে হারালো।

    “ভাষাসৈনিক আবদুল মতিন মাতৃভাষার অধিকার আদায়ে যে অবদান রেখেছেন জাতি তা চিরদিন শ্রদ্ধার সঙ্গে স্মরণ করবে।”

    শোক জানিয়ে প্রধানমন্ত্রী শেখ হাসিনা বলেছেন, “দেশের স্বাধীনতার সোপান রচনা হয় ভাষা আন্দোলনের মাধ্যমে। আর ভাষা মতিন সেই আন্দোলনের অন্যতম সংগ্রামী। তার মৃত্যু একটি জীবন্ত ইতিহাসের অবসান।”

    বিরোধীদলীয় নেতা রওশন এরশাদ, অর্থমন্ত্রী আবুল মাল আবদুল মুহিত, স্পিকার শিরীন শারমিন চৌধুরী ছাড়াও বিভিন্ন রাজনৈতিক, সামাজিক ও সাংস্কৃতিক সংগঠন ভাষা মতিনের মৃত্যুতে শোক প্রকাশ করে বিবৃতি দিয়েছে।

    বিপ্লবী ছাত্র মৈত্রীর আহ্বায়ক অভিক ফয়সাল জানান, সবার শ্রদ্ধা নিবেদনের জন্য বৃহস্পতিবার সকাল ১০টায় এই ভাষা সৈনিকের মরদেহ কেন্দ্রীয় শহীদ মিনারে রাখা হবে।

    ১৯৫২ সালে সর্বদলীয় রাষ্ট্রভাষা সংগ্রাম কমিটির আহ্বায়ক হিসেবে ভাষার দাবিতে বাঙালির আন্দোলনে নেতৃত্বের ভূমিকায় ছিলেন আবদুল মতিন।

    তিনি ঢাকা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ে ভর্তি হন ১৯৪৫ সালে। ভাষা আন্দোলনের পর তিনি ছাত্র ইউনিয়ন গঠনে ভূমিকা রাখেন এবং পরে সংগঠনটির সভাপতি হন। এরপর কমিউনিস্ট আন্দোলনে সক্রিয় হন।

    ১৯৫৪ সালে পাবনা জেলা কমিউনিস্ট পার্টির সম্পাদক হন মতিন। মওলানা ভাসানী ‘ন্যাপ’ গঠন করলে তিনি ১৯৫৭ সালে তাতে যোগ দেন। ১৯৫৮ সালে মতিন ‘পূর্ব পাকিস্তান কমিউনিস্ট পার্টি (এমএল ) গঠন করেন।

    চীনকে অনুসরণকারী বামপন্থি দলগুলোর নানা বিভাজনের মধ্যেও আবদুল মতিন সক্রিয় ছিলেন রাজনীতিতে। ১৯৯২ সালে তিনি বাংলাদেশের ওয়ার্কার্স পার্টি গঠনে সক্রিয় ভূমিকা রাখেন।

    ২০০৬ সালে ওয়ার্কার্স পার্টি থেকে তিনি পদত্যাগ করেন। পরবর্তীকালে ২০০৯ সালে হায়দার আকবর খান রনোর নেতৃত্বে ওয়ার্কার্স পার্টি (পুনর্গঠন) গঠিত হলে আবদুল মতিন তাদের সঙ্গে যোগ দেন। হায়দার আকবর খান রনো বাংলাদেশের কমিউনিস্ট পার্টিতে যোগ দিলেও আবদুল মতিন পুনর্গঠিত ওয়ার্কার্স পার্টির সঙ্গেই রয়েছেন।

    ভাষা আন্দোলন বিষয়ে তার রচিত বিভিন্ন বইয়ের মধ্যে রয়েছে ‘বাঙালী জাতির উৎস সন্ধান ও ভাষা আন্দোলন’, ‘ভাষা আন্দোলন কী এবং কেন’ এবং ‘ভাষা আন্দোলনের ইতিহাস’।

    এছাড়া প্রকাশিত হয়েছে তার আত্মজীবনীমূলক বই ‘জীবন পথের বাঁকে বাঁকে’।

    • রেজাউল করিম সুমন - ১৪ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (১২:৩০ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

      ‘নিজেদের শিকড় ভুলে গেলে সে জাতির দুর্ভাগ্য বড়ই শোচনীয়’
      আবদুল মতিনের অপ্রকাশিত সাক্ষাৎকার

      ২০১৪ সালের জানুয়ারি মাসে তাঁর সাক্ষাৎকার নিয়েছেন পলিয়ার ওয়াহিদ। পড়ুন এখানে।

  7. মাসুদ করিম - ৮ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (৬:৫৯ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Post by Masud Karim.

    Press Release

    8 October 2014

    The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2014 to

    Eric Betzig
    Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA, USA,

    Stefan W. Hell
    Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, and German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany

    and

    William E. Moerner
    Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy”

    Surpassing the limitations of the light microscope

    For a long time optical microscopy was held back by a presumed limitation: that it would never obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light. Helped by fluorescent molecules the Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 2014 ingeniously circumvented this limitation. Their ground-breaking work has brought optical microscopy into the nanodimension.

    In what has become known as nanoscopy, scientists visualize the pathways of individual molecules inside living cells. They can see how molecules create synapses between nerve cells in the brain; they can track proteins involved in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases as they aggregate; they follow individual proteins in fertilized eggs as these divide into embryos.

    It was all but obvious that scientists should ever be able to study living cells in the tiniest molecular detail. In 1873, the microscopist Ernst Abbe stipulated a physical limit for the maximum resolution of traditional optical microscopy: it could never become better than 0.2 micrometres. Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell and William E. Moerner are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2014 for having bypassed this limit. Due to their achievements the optical microscope can now peer into the nanoworld.

    Two separate principles are rewarded. One enables the method stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy, developed by Stefan Hell in 2000. Two laser beams are utilized; one stimulates fluorescent molecules to glow, another cancels out all fluorescence except for that in a nanometre-sized volume. Scanning over the sample, nanometre for nanometre, yields an image with a resolution better than Abbe’s stipulated limit.

    Eric Betzig and William Moerner, working separately, laid the foundation for the second method, single-molecule microscopy. The method relies upon the possibility to turn the fluorescence of individual molecules on and off. Scientists image the same area multiple times, letting just a few interspersed molecules glow each time. Superimposing these images yields a dense super-image resolved at the nanolevel. In 2006 Eric Betzig utilized this method for the first time.

    Today, nanoscopy is used world-wide and new knowledge of greatest benefit to mankind is produced on a daily basis.

  8. মাসুদ করিম - ৯ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (১২:০৪ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    World’s oldest hand stencil found in Indonesian cave

    IN A limestone cave sits the world’s oldest hand stencil. Next to it is a drawing of a pig-deer. Together, they are turning our understanding of the birth of art on its head.

    Around 40,000 years ago, early Europeans were the first to begin smearing pigment on walls, or so the story goes. But now paintings of animals and hand stencils on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi have been identified as just as old as their European equivalents – and in some cases older.

    The most striking of these looks like a female babirusa, known as a pig-deer, in profile (pictured, right). A barely perceptible red line below may represent the ground that it is walking on. Next to this painting, which adorns the ceiling of a 4-metre-high cave, is a human hand stencil, made by pressing a hand against the rock and spraying wet pigments over it.

    To find out when these and 12 similar paintings were made, Maxime Aubert of Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, and colleagues chipped off a tiny bit of the calcite layer covering the pigment. The shimmery crystalline material is left on many cave walls by dripping water.

    Analysing the uranium in these deposits revealed that the babirusa image is at least 35,400 years old, meaning it is among the earliest identified figurative paintings in the world. The hand stencil is at least 39,900 years old (see picture below, top right), making it the oldest example of this common ancient art form ever found (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature13422).

    “The paintings are magnificent,” says Francesco d’Errico of the University of Bordeaux in France.

    They were undoubtedly made by early modern humans, and go against the current belief that artistic expression began with early Europeans. Instead, art must either have emerged more than once, at sites towards both the eastern and western edges of the range of early modern humans, or art began much earlier, before humans migrated out of Africa and headed for Europe and Asia some 60,000 years ago.

    We shouldn’t be surprised, says Alistair Pike of the University of Southampton in the UK, who says many other firsts have been coming out of places like China. “There is bound to be a revolution when these countries start seriously studying their sites.”

    The babirusa image, plus a painting of what could be a pig that is at least 35,700 years old, are likely to fuel the debate over how art evolved. Some say simple dots and lines came first, followed by outline representations of the world and, eventually, complex murals. Others think that art’s development was not so linear, and that sophisticated murals, possibly including those at France’s Chauvet cave, date right back to the earliest stages.

    Hand stencils are made by spitting pigment through some kind of straw, and are found in caves across the ages and from Europe to Asia and South America. It is striking that this oldest example has been found in Indonesia, while in El Castillo, Spain, later hand stencils are found at the site of the earliest known cave painting – a large red dot at least 40,800 years old.

    Hand prints could be a signature, or might be early signs of mysticism. “One can only speculate,” says d’Errico. “You establish a link between the wall and you as a person, and in a sense leave your sign on the wall forever.”

    Paul Pettitt of Durham University in the UK is elaborating another hypothesis. “To me this is beginning to look like a plausible scenario for how humans invented figurative art,” he says. “It’s not so surprising that our ancestors would place this important natural tool on a wall and trace it. It will then occur to these people that they have created an outline… and that if a hand can be represented in outline, so can anything else.”

    If Pettitt is right, the hand stencil was how our ancestors discovered that a three-dimensional object could be represented with a two-dimensional line.

    This article appeared in print under the headline “Oldest hand stencil found in Indonesia”

  9. মাসুদ করিম - ৯ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (৬:৪৪ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Post by Masud Karim.

    Post by Gallimard.

    • মাসুদ করিম - ১২ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (১১:৩৫ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

      MY FIRST PATRICK MODIANO

      The judging panel for the Nobel prize in literature is, if it’s anything, a very well-funded book club. Sometimes it chooses writers you’ve heard of, or even read. Sometimes it chooses writers whose names you have to Google. Yesterday, after I’d found out that Patrick Modiano was French and not Italian (as I’d guessed from his name), I saw that a few of his books had been translated into English. So taking up the recommendation I headed to the library, scanned along the Ms, and found a short book called “Night Rounds”. It was my first Patrick Modiano and it won’t be my last.

      “Night Rounds” was written in 1969, and published in English two years later. At little more than 100 pages, it’s brief and intense. The setting is Paris during the second world war. Phosphorus bombs fall from the sky, razed houses line the streets in a jumble of broken beams and shredded Toile de Jouy. And dashing through the streets, driving a white Bentley loaned to him by his criminal superiors, is the narrator—20 years old, a petty thief, extortionist, whore and “model son”. It’s a story of double-crossing and betrayal. More than that it’s a story of moral panic, of a behavioural vacuum in a ruined city that sucks in wrong ‘uns and strays. In essence it’s a thrilling combination of detective novel and existential drama.

      The panic shows on the surface. Opening the book is like being presented with a broken mirror, the world a mess of colourful fragments. Amid a party of exotically named characters—Ivanoff the Oracle, Count Baruzzi, Frau Sultana—there’s an interrogation taking place. Two men named Mr Philibert and the Khedive want names, locations. Most of all they want to find Lamballe. As people knock over huge vases of dahlias and orchids, and flutes of champagne are poured, screams emanate from the cellar. Modiano gradually, skilfully, gives you the tools to reassemble the cracked image: how the narrator got here to this grand house, his relationship with these interrogators, the identity of Lamballe. But the atmosphere comes straight away, a louche fug of waltzes and torture.

      Modiano’s baroque imagination for detail and image is dazzling. Paris is a drowned city, “Ten thousand, a hundred thousand drowned men with laboured, listless movements, like the cast of a slow-motion film.” At one point, the narrator—chief among these drifting men—is sitting in the mansion he’s occupied, which smells of Arabian perfume. He tries on a dress “with imitation tulle and festoons of pink morning-glories” and a hat with flowers and “plumes of lace”. He paints his face with kohl and henna and sits before the mirror: “to while away the time, I waited till dawn for the apocalypse.” And underneath the decor, as though Modiano has set diamonds in a hunk of lead, there’s a heavy psychological drag. Sitting in the Bois de Boulogne one evening, lit up by Japanese lanterns, the narrator desperately examines two friends with fairy-tale names, Coco Lacour and Esmeralda, “scrutinising the expression on their faces the way you cling to a bridge railing.”

      But perhaps the best thing about this novella is the way the narration hovers between confession and self-excuse. He never quite allows you to know whether you aren’t just another one of his dupes, hearing him dash round the corner before you realise you’re missing a wad of francs. Modiano’s world is full of ambiguities and backsliding and glamorous degradation. It’s a world I want to go back to.

  10. রেজাউল করিম সুমন - ১০ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (১১:১১ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    প্রমোদ কাপুরের My Experiment With Gandhi প্রকাশিত হবে ২০১৫ সালে। সম্প্রতি তিনি Outlook-এ লিখেছেন গান্ধী-জীবনের এক অনালোচিত অধ্যায় নিয়ে।

    When Gandhi Nearly Slipped

    She was his ‘pearl’; he her ‘law-giver’. Gandhi’s relationship with Saraladebi Chowdhurani in 1919-1920 charged his politics, threatened his marriage and alarmed his disciples.

    null

    বিস্তারিত পড়ুন এখানে।

  11. মাসুদ করিম - ১০ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (৮:৩০ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Post by Masud Karim.

    The Nobel Peace Prize for 2014

    The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2014 is to be awarded to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzay for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education. Children must go to school and not be financially exploited. In the poor countries of the world, 60% of the present population is under 25 years of age. It is a prerequisite for peaceful global development that the rights of children and young people be respected. In conflict-ridden areas in particular, the violation of children leads to the continuation of violence from generation to generation.

    Showing great personal courage, Kailash Satyarthi, maintaining Gandhi’s tradition, has headed various forms of protests and demonstrations, all peaceful, focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain. He has also contributed to the development of important international conventions on children’s rights.

    Despite her youth, Malala Yousafzay has already fought for several years for the right of girls to education, and has shown by example that children and young people, too, can contribute to improving their own situations. This she has done under the most dangerous circumstances. Through her heroic struggle she has become a leading spokesperson for girls’ rights to education.

    The Nobel Committee regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism. Many other individuals and institutions in the international community have also contributed. It has been calculated that there are 168 million child labourers around the world today. In 2000 the figure was 78 million higher. The world has come closer to the goal of eliminating child labour.

    The struggle against suppression and for the rights of children and adolescents contributes to the realization of the “fraternity between nations” that Alfred Nobel mentions in his will as one of the criteria for the Nobel Peace Prize.

    Oslo, 10 October 2014

    Post by Masud Karim.

  12. রেজাউল করিম সুমন - ১৩ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (৪:২৪ অপরাহ্ণ)

    স্বাধীন বাংলা বেতারের শব্দ সৈনিক প্রসেনজিৎ বোস আর নেই

    null

    যুগান্তর, অক্টোবর ১৩, ২০১৪, আশ্বিন ২৮, ১৪২১, সোমবার
    মেহেরপুর প্রতিনিধি

    বিশিষ্ট মুক্তিযোদ্ধা, স্বাধীন বাংলা বেতারের শব্দ সৈনিক প্রসেনজিৎ বোস বাবুয়া আর নেই। সোমবার ভোর ৩টা ৩৩ মিনিটে মেহেরপুর শহরের নিজ ‘বসুভিলা’তে মারা গেছেন। তার মৃত্যুর খবরে মেহেরপুরে শোকের ছায়া নেমে এসেছে। সকাল সাড়ে ১০টায় ড. শহীদ সামসুজ্জো পার্কে মেহেরপুর জেলা মুক্তিযোদ্ধা ইউনিট ও জেলা প্রশাসন তাকে গার্ড অব অনারের আয়োজন করেছে। বেলা ১১টায় শবযাত্রা শেষে বামনপাড়া শ্মশানঘাটে তার অন্তেষ্ট্রিক্রিয়া সম্পন্ন হবে।

    বাবুয়া বোস স্বাধীন বাংলা বেতারে প্রচারিত নাটক ‘জল্লাদের দরবার’ বেতার নাটকে লারকানার নবাবজাদা ওরফে ভুট্টোর চরিত্রে অভিনয় করেস্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধে স্বাধীনতাকামী মানুষকে উদ্বুদ্ধ করেন। বাংলাদেশ টেলিভিশনে আতিকুল হক প্রযোজিত দীনবন্ধু মিত্রের নীলদর্পণ নাটক সহ বিভিন্ন নাটকে অভিনয় করেন। তার বাড়িটি ছিল মেহেরপুরের সাংস্কৃতিক কর্মিদের মিলনস্থল।

    ১৯৪০ সালের ১০ অক্টোবর এ অঞ্চলের জমিদার বোস পরিবারের বসু ভিলায় জন্ম গ্রহণ করেন প্রসেনজিৎ বোস বাবুয়া। তার বাবার নাম শ্রী হিরণ কুমার বোস ও মাতা শ্রীমতী অলোকা বোস। আজন্ম অসাম্প্রদায়িক ও প্রগতিশীল ভাবনার এই মানুষটি শিক্ষাগুরু শিবনারায়ণ চক্রবর্তীর কাছে অভিনয়ে হাতেখড়ি নিয়ে সাংস্কৃতিক অঙ্গনে প্রবেশ করেন। ১৯৭১ সালে তিনি মুক্তিযুদ্ধে যোগ দেন। রণাঙ্গনের সৈনিকদের উৎসাহ দিতে স্বাধীন বাংলা বেতার কেন্দ্রের সাথে যুক্ত হন। প্রখ্যাত নাট্যকার কল্যাণ মিত্রের আমন্ত্রণে তার লেখা ‘জল্লাদের দরবারে’ নাটকে তিনি প্রখ্যাত অভিনেতা সৈয়দ হাসান ইমাম, আনোয়ারা হোসেন, রাজু আহম্মেদ, আজমল হুদা মিঠু, সুমিতা দেবীসহ অনেক গুণী শিল্পীর সাথে অভিনয় করেন। সাংবাদিক মার্ক টালি তার মেহেরপুরের বাড়িতে আতিথেয়তা গ্রহণ করেন।

    সরকারিভাবে এ পর্যন্ত এই গুণিজনকে কোন মূল্যায়ন করা হয়নি। সম্প্রতি সময়ে মুক্তিযুদ্ধের সময় তার অবদানের কথা স্বীকার করে শুধু মাত্র চুয়াডাঙ্গার অরিন্দম সাংস্কৃতিকগোষ্ঠী ও মেহেরপুর জেলা শিল্পকলা একাডেমি থেকে তাকে সম্মানিত করা হয়েছে।

  13. মাসুদ করিম - ১৩ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (৯:০০ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Post by Masud Karim.

    Press Release

    13 October 2014

    The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2014 to

    Jean Tirole
    Toulouse 1 Capitole University, France

    “for his analysis of market power and regulation”.

    The science of taming powerful firms

    Jean Tirole is one of the most influential economists of our time. He has made important theoretical research contributions in a number of areas, but most of all he has clarified how to understand and regulate industries with a few powerful firms.

    Many industries are dominated by a small number of large firms or a single monopoly. Left unregulated, such markets often produce socially undesirable results – prices higher than those motivated by costs, or unproductive firms that survive by blocking the entry of new and more productive ones.

    From the mid-1980s and onwards, Jean Tirole has breathed new life into research on such market failures. His analysis of firms with market power provides a unified theory with a strong bearing on central policy questions: how should the government deal with mergers or cartels, and how should it regulate monopolies?

    Before Tirole, researchers and policymakers sought general principles for all industries. They advocated simple policy rules, such as capping prices for monopolists and prohibiting cooperation between competitors, while permitting cooperation between firms with different positions in the value chain. Tirole showed theoretically that such rules may work well in certain conditions, but do more harm than good in others. Price caps can provide dominant firms with strong motives to reduce costs – a good thing for society – but may also permit excessive profits – a bad thing for society. Cooperation on price setting within a market is usually harmful, but cooperation regarding patent pools can benefit everyone. The merger of a firm and its supplier may encourage innovation, but may also distort competition.

    The best regulation or competition policy should therefore be carefully adapted to every industry’s specific conditions. In a series of articles and books, Jean Tirole has presented a general framework for designing such policies and applied it to a number of industries, ranging from telecommunications to banking. Drawing on these new insights, governments can better encourage powerful firms to become more productive and, at the same time, prevent them from harming competitors and customers.

  14. অবিশ্রুত - ১৫ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (৩:৩৭ অপরাহ্ণ)

    কলম্বাস দিবস উদযাপন হয় প্রতি বছর। গৌরবান্বিত করা হয় কলম্বাসকে। কিন্তু সত্যিই কি তার কোনো গৌরব রয়েছে? লিখেছেন হাওয়ার্ড জিন।

    • রেজাউল করিম সুমন - ১৬ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (১২:৩৭ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

      ভাই অবিশ্রুত,
      মুক্তাঙ্গনে বছর পাঁচেক আগে ‘ক্রিস্টোফার কলম্বাস আমেরিকার কলঙ্ক!’ নামে একটি পোস্ট লিখেছিলেন আহমেদ মুনির। আপনার সুপারিশকৃত হাওয়ার্ড জিন-এর লেখাটিতে উপনিবেশবাদী কলম্বাসের আসল চেহারা উন্মোচিত হয়েছে। ধন্যবাদ আপনাকে।

  15. মাসুদ করিম - ২০ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (৯:২২ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    ইতিহাসবিদ সালাহ্উদ্দীন আহমদ আর নেই

    জাতীয় অধ্যাপক সালাহ্উদ্দীন আহমদ মারা গেছেন, যিনি ইতিহাস চর্চায় বিশেষ অবদানের জন্য একুশে পদক এবং স্বাধীনতা দিবস পুরস্কার লাভ করেছিলেন।

    রোববার ভোর ৬টার দিকে বনানীতে নিজের বাসায় তার মৃত্যু হয় বলে স্বজনরা জানিয়েছেন। তিনি বার্ধক্যজনিত বিভিন্ন রোগে ভুগছিলেন।

    মৃত্যুকালে তার বয়স হয়েছিল ৯০ বছর।

    এই ইতিহাসবিদের মৃত্যুতে শোক প্রকাশ করেছেন প্রধানমন্ত্রী শেখ হাসিনা।

    শোকবাণীতে তিনি বলেছেন, প্রফেসর সালাহ্উদ্দীন আহমদের মৃত্যুতে বাংলাদেশে ইতিহাস চর্চায় যে শূন্যতার সৃষ্টি হল তা পূরণ হওয়ার নয়।

    স্বজনরা জানিয়েছেন, সর্বস্তরের জনগণের শ্রদ্ধা নিবেদনের জন্য সালাহ্উদ্দীন আহমদের মরদেহ বেলা আড়াইটা থেকে বিকাল ৪টা পর্যন্ত কেন্দ্রীয় শহীদ মিনারে রাখা হবে। বাদ আসর ঢাকা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় কেন্দ্রীয় মসজিদে জানাজা শেষে বনানী গোরস্তানে তাকে সমাহিত করা হবে।

    ১৯২৪ সালে ২৪শে সেপ্টেম্বর ফরিদপুর শহরে জন্ম সালাহ্উদ্দীনের। কলকাতা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় থেকে ইতিহাসে বিএ অনার্স এবং এমএ করেছিলেন তিনি। পরে যুক্তরাষ্ট্রের পেনসেলভেনিয়া বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় থেকে এম এ এবং লন্ডন বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় থেকে পিএইচডি ডিগ্রি লাভ করেন।

    শিক্ষক হিসেবে তাঁর কর্মজীবন শুরু হয় ১৯৪৮ সালে জগন্নাথ কলেজে। ১৯৫৬ সালে তিনি জাপান বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ে আধুনিক জাপানের ইতিহাস ও সংস্কৃতি বিষয়ে পড়াশুনা ও গবেষণা করেন।

    দীর্ঘদিন তিনি রাজশাহী, জাহাঙ্গীরনগর এবং ঢাকা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ে ইতিহাসের অধ্যাপক হিসেবে কর্মরত ছিলেন।

    তাঁর প্রকাশিত উল্লেখযোগ্য গ্রন্থগুলোর মধ্যে রয়েছে সোশ্যাল আইডিয়াজ অ্যান্ড সোশ্যাল চেঞ্জ ইন বেঙ্গল ১৮১৮–১৮৩৫, বাংলাদেশ অতীত বর্তমান, বাঙালীর সাধনা ও বাংলাদেশের মুক্তিযুদ্ধ, ইতিহাসের সন্ধানে।

    অধ্যাপক সালাহ্উদ্দীন বিডিনিউজ টোয়েন্টিফোর ডটকমে নিয়মিত কলাম লিখতেন। বিডিনিউজ টোয়েন্টিফোর ডটকমের নানা আনুষ্ঠানিক ও ঘরোয়া আয়োজনে তিনি সানন্দে উপস্থিত হতেন। আগামী ২৩ অক্টোবর ইন্টারনেট সংবাদপত্রটির অষ্টম প্রতিষ্ঠাবার্ষিকী উপলক্ষে আট বছরের নির্বাচিত আলোকচিত্র প্রদর্শনী উদ্বোধন করার কথা ছিল সদ্য প্রয়াত এই জাতীয় অধ্যাপকের।

    এই ইতিহাসবিদকে স্মরণ করে বিডিনিউজ টোয়েন্টিফোর ডটকমের প্রধান সম্পাদক তৌফিক ইমরোজ খালিদী বলেন, “তিনি আমাদেরই একজন ছিলেন। একজন অনুপ্রেরণাদায়ক অভিভাবক। প্রজ্ঞা ও বুদ্ধিবৃত্তিক সততায় যে প্রজন্মটি আমাদের অনুপ্রেরণা জুগিয়েছে প্রফেসর সালাহ্উদ্দীন সম্ভবত সেই প্রজন্মেরই শেষ প্রতিনিধি।”

    অধ্যাপক সালাউদ্দীন আহমদ

    ২১ সেপ্টেম্বর ১৯২২, ফরিদপুর
    ১৯ অক্টোবর ২০১৪, ঢাকা

    ২০০৪ সালের সম্ভবত আগস্ট মাসে সালাহউদ্দীন আহমদ একটা শোকলেখন লিখেছিলেন, তাঁর মাস্টারমশাই হীরেন্দ্রনাথ মুখোপাধ্যায়কে নিয়ে। সে-লেখাই এক অর্বাচীন পাঠককে আগ্রহী করে তুলেছিল সালাউদ্দীন আহমদ সম্পর্কে। এর বছর দশেক পরে, ক’ মাস আগে জাতীয় জাদুঘরের এক অনুষ্ঠানে প্রথমবারের মতো তাঁর আলোচনা শুনেছি। মনে হয়েছিল, এই সৌম্যকান্তি, মৃদুভাষী, প্রাজ্ঞ মানুষটির উপস্থিতিই অন্যদের জন্য একটা বড়ো প্রাপ্তি। Rezaul Karim Sumon added 2 new photos

  16. মাসুদ করিম - ২২ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (৯:০৫ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    Sex ’emerged in ancient Scottish lake’
    Scientists believe they have discovered the origin of copulation.

    An international team of researchers says a fish called Microbrachius dicki is the first-known animal to stop reproducing by spawning and instead mate by having sex.

    The primitive bony fish, which was about 8cm long, lived in ancient lakes about 385 million years ago in what is now Scotland.

    The research is published in the journal Nature.

    Lead author Prof John Long, from Flinders University in Australia, said: “We have defined the very point in evolution where the origin of internal fertilisation in all animals began.

    “That is a really big step.”

    Prof Long added that the discovery was made as he was looking through a box of ancient fish fossils.

    He noticed that one of the M. dicki specimens had an odd L-shaped appendage. Further investigation revealed that this was the male fish’s genitals.

    “The male has large bony claspers. These are the grooves that they use to transfer sperm into the female,” explained Prof Long.

    The female fish, on the other hand, had a small bony structure at their rear that locked the male organ into place.

    Constrained by their anatomy, the fish probably had to mate side by side.

    “They couldn’t have done it in a ‘missionary position’,” said Prof Long. “The very first act of copulation was done sideways, square-dance style.”

    He added that the fish were able to stay in position with the help of their small arm-like fins.

    “The little arms are very useful to link the male and female together, so the male can get this large L-shaped sexual organ into position to dock with the female’s genital plates, which are very rough like cheese graters.

    “They act like Velcro, locking the male organ into position to transfer sperm.”

    Surprisingly, the researchers think this first attempt to reproduce internally was not around for long.

    As fish evolved, they reverted back to spawning, in which eggs and sperm to fertilise them are released into the water by female and male creatures respectively. It took another few million years for copulation to make a come-back, reappearing in ancestors of sharks and rays.

    Commenting on the research, Dr Matt Friedman, from the University of Oxford, UK, said: “The placoderm group (which includes Microbrachius dicki) is a well known group – the fossils are pretty common, and it’s not as if this one was found in some far-off, exotic part of the world. It was found in Scotland.

    “It is very remarkable that we haven’t noticed this before.”

    Post by Rayhan Rashid.

  17. মাসুদ করিম - ২৬ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (১০:২৩ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    Netaji deputy, Nehru aide was Soviet spy: British documents

    A deputy of freedom fighter Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, an “old friend” of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and a former Indian ambassador, A C N Nambiar, has been described as a Soviet spy.

    According to documents declassified under the 30-year-rule at the National Archives here, Nambiar went to Berlin in 1924 as a journalist and worked with the Indian communist group, visiting Moscow as a Soviet “guest” in 1929.

    “On the outbreak of the Second World War Nambiar was expelled from Germany but later allowed to return as Subhash Chandra Bose’s deputy in Berlin. Nambiar became the German-financed leader of the Free India Movement in Europe when Bose moved to the Far East to join the Japanese.

    “He was also concerned with the Indian Legion, composed of Indian prisoners of war, which in 1944 was absorbed by the SS,” an archive release said in a statement.

    Arathil Candeth Narayan Nambiar was arrested in Austria in June 1945 and interrogated as a Nazi collaborator.

    After the war, he worked as counsellor at the Indian Legation in Berne, as Indian Ambassador to Scandinavia and then to West Germany and finally as European correspondent of the ‘Hindustan Standard’ RPT Standard.

    He claimed this last post was a cover for industrial intelligence collection, the documents claimed.

    In 1959 he was reported by a defector source to have been an agent for the Soviet GRU from the 1920s.

    The British documents include names and details of Netaji-led Azad Hind activities in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

    The declassified files also include copies of letters from Nambiar to Bose recovered from the German submarine U-boat 234 after it surrendered during the Second World War.

    A note in the files by V W Smith implies Nambiar’s close association with Nehru, saying: “one may hazard the conjecture that the ‘very prominent person’ referred to be Nambiar is Pandit Nehru, who undoubtedly knows the full facts”.

    It goes on to say that his appointment as an Indian diplomat made him “indebted to his old friend Pandit Nehru”.

    The documents released on Friday include the latest batch of files on Britain’s MI5 activities as well as seven files on British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm and his activities as a member of the Communist Party and the wartime stories of British fascist sympathisers and ‘Fifth Columnists’ exposed by an MI5 agent posing as a representative of the Gestapo.

  18. মাসুদ করিম - ২৯ অক্টোবর ২০১৪ (৯:৫৭ অপরাহ্ণ)

    বোর্হেসের বিখ্যাত ইংরেজি বক্তৃতা : দি নর্টন লেকচারস ১৯৬৭-৬৮, ছয়টি বক্তৃতায় কবিতার বিভ্রমের বিস্তার ও বিস্ময় উন্মোচণ করেছেন বহুভাষা ও সংস্কৃতির পাঠক নিরন্তর স্রষ্টা কবিতায় বিশ্বাসী অসামান্য এই লেখক। সংখ্যাঙ্কিত লিন্কগুলোতে ক্লিক করে শুনুন।

    The Craft of Verse: The Norton Lectures, 1967-68

    ১. Introduction

    ২. The Riddle of Poet

    ৩. The Metaphor (part 1)

    ৪. The Metaphor(part 2)

    ৫. The Telling of the Tale

    ৬. Word-Music, and Translation

    ৭. Thought and Poetry (Part 1)

    ৮. Thought and Poetry (part 2)

    ৯. A Poet’s Creed

    “The central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry.”
    Jorge Luis Borges, This Craft of Verse

    These are the six Norton Lectures that Jorge Luis Borges delivered at Harvard University in the fall of 1967 and spring of 1968. The recordings, only lately discovered in the Harvard University Archives, uniquely capture the cadences, candor, wit, and remarkable erudition of one of the most extraordinary and enduring literary voices of our age. Through a twist of fate that the author of Labyrinths himself would have relished, the lost lectures return to us now in Borges’ own voice.

    Born in 1899, Borges was by this time almost completely blind (only a single color– yellow, “the color of the tiger” — remained for him), and thus addressed his audience without the aid of written notes. Probably the best-read citizen of the globe in his day, he draws on a wealth of examples from literature in modern and medieval English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese, speaking with characteristic eloquence on Plato, the Norse kenningar, Byron, Poe, Chesterton, Joyce, and Frost, as well as on translations of Homer, the Bible, and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Though his avowed topic is poetry, Borges explores subjects ranging from prose forms (especially the novel), literary history, and translation theory, to philosophical aspects of literature in particular and communication in general. Throughout, Borges tells the very personal story of his lifelong love affair with the English language and its literature, ancient and modern. In each lecture, he gives us marvelous insights into his literary sensibility, tastes, preoccupations, and beliefs.

    Whether discussing metaphor, epic poetry, the origins of verse, poetic meaning, or his own “poetic creed,” Borges gives a performance as entertaining as it is intellectually engaging. A lesson in the love of literature and language, this is a sustained personal encounter with a literary voice for whom the twentieth century will be long remembered.

    From Library Journal
    For Borges (1899-1986), the central fact of life was the existence of words and their potential as building blocks of poetry. In this series of six long-forgotten lectures given at Harvard more than 30 years ago, he insists that reading (in English, primarily) gave him more pleasure than writing. Most of his examples are taken from English-speaking writers, such as Shakespeare, Keats, Byron, Whitman, and Frost. Borges developed a passion for the study of Old English, with its abundant metaphors, harsh beauty, and deep feeling (though not, he admits, for its deep thought). He dislikes the history of literature, which he feels demeans individual works, and he is generally wistful for a future when we are no longer overburdened by history. He champions the primacy of storytelling and prefers the epic to the novel, which he finds “padded.” He also argues that one of the great poverties of our time is that we no longer believe in happiness and success and that happy endings seem commercial or staged. Some of his ideas are quirky, but it’s still a privilege to have access to one of the most distinctive literary voices of the century. Recommended.DJack Shreve, Allegany Coll. of Maryland, Cumberland

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