Dhaka, 20 Jun 20 (UNB)- Robi- 10 Minute School, an online school of the country, has recently launched a rich library of digital content on English language in collaboration with the British Council. 

These latest videos further bolster the education platform’s appeal to the wider student community.

The content includes a full-fledged playlist on basic English grammar rules, most common English mistakes, professional skills such as giving presentations and writing emails, Language Club Sessions (Live), phrases and idioms, pronunciation, tenses, articles, IELTS and many other aspects of the English language.

Students from all over the country can now improve their English language skills through the Robi-10 Minute School’s website (www.robi10minuteschool.com) or its android-based mobile app, even from the comfort of their own homes.
 

Jerusalem, June 20 (Xinhua/UNB) -- Israeli and US researchers have identified the gene responsible for congenital diarrhoeal disorders (CDDs), which could lead to the development of a cure for these diseases, as published Wednesday by the Weizmann Institute of Science (WIS).

The study, conducted by researchers from WIS, Tel Aviv University and Sheba Medical Center, all located in central Israel, in collaboration with the University of California at Berkeley, was published in the journal "Nature."

CDDs are rare hereditary diseases, characterized by severe diarrhea right after birth, dehydration, malnutrition and even death.

These disorders can result from a variety of defects in the digestive system, structural or functional.

The team examined the genetic background of the CDDs in 8 Israeli babies and identified the gene responsible for the disorders.

The researchers determined the sequence of the genomes in the 8 babies and identified a lacking segment that exists in healthy babies.

The region of the deficiency, which the researchers named "ICR" (intestinal-critical region), was mutant in all 8 babies, suggesting its involvement in the disease.

The researchers also found that the ICR area is evolutionary preserved in vertebrates, suggesting its importance.

The team showed that genetically engineered mice with ICR deficiency had similar symptoms as in humans: they developed diarrhea at a very young age, did not develop well and survived less than their healthy siblings.

Then, the researchers found a segment of the genome whose expression was dependent on ICR. It turned out that this segment, called "PERCC1," is a gene that encodes a protein that has never been described or studied in the past.

The researchers concluded that ICR controls the expression of PERCC1 in the digestive system that develops in the embryonic stage and that its proper expression is essential for its normal development.

Dhaka, June 20 (UNB) - Facebook is working closely with key non-profit and research partners to use artificial intelligence (AI) and big data to address large-scale social, health and infrastructure challenges in Asia and accelerate achievement of the sustainable development goals.

The latest map for Bangladesh can be downloaded on Facebook’s page on Humanitarian Data Exchange.

Facebook is applying the processing muscle of its compute power, its extensive data science skills and its expertise in AI to create the world’s most detailed and accurate maps of local populations.

Facebook also partners with Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN (http://www.ciesin.org/)) to ensure that this effort leverages the best available administrative data for all countries involved, said a media release on Thursday.

By combining these publicly and commercially available datasets with Facebook’s AI capabilities, Facebook has created population maps that are 3X more detailed than any other source.

The high resolution population density maps will show an estimate of the number of people living within 30-meter grid tiles, and include the number of children under five, as well as the number of women of reproductive age, and other helpful demographics.

“Facebook’s population density maps can improve how nonprofits do their work, how researchers learn, and how policies are developed. Building data products from non-personal data sources like satellite imagery and census data allows Facebook to share its data science and compute power with the world while protecting privacy,” said the spokesperson.

High-resolution satellite imagery already exists for much of the world.

However, prior to Facebook’s mapping project, it would have required countless hours for volunteers to comb through millions of square miles of pictures to identify which contained a tiny town or remote village.

The Facebook team used AI to solve that problem, efficiently crunching through data at a petabyte scale.

For X country, for example, the computer vision system examined 11z.5 billion individual images to determine whether they contained a building. The team found approximately 110 million building locations in just a few days.

“Since I first started my humanitarian career in the Peace Corps up until just a few weeks ago speaking with experts at the 2019 World Health Assembly in Geneva, a common need is accurate population data,” says Alex Pompe, a research manager at Facebook.

“These maps showcase the power of collaboration between Facebook and top research institutions like Columbia University to combine public data sources and machine learning to empower more data-driven humanitarian projects around the globe.”

Using its machine learning capabilities, Facebook started developing population density maps to provide better tools to support connectivity efforts around the world.

No Facebook data is used in the project and the census and satellite data used contain no personally identifiable information.

To learn more about Facebook’s work on high resolution population density maps and other efforts in data for good, please visit the project website here.

Humanitarian Open Street Map has used the high resolution population density maps in a number of countries to support their work on the Missing Maps project.

“Facebook’s high-resolution population maps have supported Humanitarian OpenStreetMap and Missing Maps’ mission of putting the world’s most at-risk places on the map,” says Tyler Radford, executive director of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, which participates in the Missing Maps project.

“The maps from Facebook ensure we focus our volunteers’ time and resources on the places they're most needed, improving the efficacy of our programs.”

Crisis event management software vendor Kontur is also using population density maps in its Disaster Ninja platform to help the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team to be able to make faster decisions during times of natural disasters.

Darafei Praliaskouski, Head of Product from Kontur says, “When you're deploying a team of disaster responders to crisis site, you want to provide them with a map of the area they'll be operating in, especially in vulnerable regions throughout Asia. We've made Disaster Ninja with Facebook Population Density maps so that mappers don't have to manually inspect thousands of square kilometers and focus on mapping the AI-highlighted buildings and roads right away.”

Washington, June 20 (AP/UNB) — Cold War era spy satellite images are showing scientists that glaciers on the Himalayas are now melting about twice as fast as they used to.

The Asian mountain range, which includes Mount Everest, has been losing ice at a rate of about 1% a year since 2000, according to a study Wednesday in the journal Science Advances .

“The amount of ice (lost) is scary but what is much more scary is the doubling of the melt rate,” said Josh Maurer, a glacier researcher at Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory and lead author of the study.

The Himalayas, part of an area that is referred to as “The Third Pole” because it has so much ice, has only 72% of the ice that was there in 1975. It has been losing about 8.3 billion tons (7.5 billion metric tons) of ice a year, compared 4.3 billion tons (3.9 billion metric tons) a year between 1975 and 2000, according to the study.

The Himalayan melt doesn’t contribute much to sea level rise, Mauer said, because it is dwarfed by melting in Greenland and Antarctica. But the loss of the ice means current and future disruptions of water supplies — both surges and shortages — for the hundreds of millions of people in the region who rely on it for hydropower, agriculture, and drinking, said study co-author Jorg Schaefer, a climate geochemistry professor at Columbia.

“Disaster is in the making here,” Schaefer said.

Scientists lacked some critical data on ice in the Himalayas until Maurer found once-classified 3D images from U.S. spy satellites that had been put online. Those images allowed Maurer to calculate how much ice was on the Himalayas in 1975. He then used other satellite data to measure ice in 2000 and then again in 2016.

Past research looked at individual Himalayan glaciers over short time periods, but this is the first to look at the big picture — 650 glaciers over decades, Schaefer said.

For years, scientists have looked at many possible causes for melting glaciers, including pollution and changes in rainfall. But when the team was able to see trends using long-term data, they found the major culprit: “it’s clear it’s temperature and everything else doesn’t matter as much,” Schaefer said.

Maurer double-checked that conclusion by feeding the data into a computer model. It “predicted” the same type of ice melt that happened over the four decades.

NASA climate scientist Josh Willis, who wasn’t part of the study, said it provided important confirmation of what scientists suspected and what models showed.

“As a scientist it’s nice to hear that we’re right, but then again as a civilian it’s sometimes a little scary to hear that we’re right,” Willis said.

Dhaka, June 20 (UNB) - Gambling ads that appeared on an app "appealing to under 18s" have been banned by the advertising watchdog, reports BBC.

The ads for LottoGo EuroMillions, William Hill Vegas, Betfair Bingo and Dunder came up in the Looney Tunes World of Mayhem app in February.

All four firms say they have since stopped working with affiliate company Tapjoy, which placed ads on the app.

The ASA ruled the ads must not be used again without limiting the risk of children being exposed to them.

In its ruling, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said Tapjoy acknowledged the Looney Tunes app had been mistakenly categorised with a "mature-gambling" setting.

And Scopely, the publisher of Looney Tunes World of Mayhem, told the ASA it did not target its games to children, and noted that individuals under the age of 16 in the EU are not permitted to play the games.

The game has a rating of PEGI 7 in the UK Google Play app store, meaning it was suitable for players aged seven and above.

It allowed users to build worlds and situations based on the Looney Tunes cartoons and collect characters to "battle" each other.

The ASA said: "Given the use of cartoon characters, cartoonish violence and the relatively simple nature of the game, we considered it was likely to appeal to many under-18s.

"However, we acknowledged that the characters would be well known to older players, and the game was likely to have more general appeal."

William Hill told the ASA it is conducting a full review into work with its affiliates to prevent the issue happening again.