Design and Development of English Learning Facebook Application based on Platform as a Service (PaaS) by using Smart Gamification

Social networking sites like Facebook are not just an element of passing time but a platform for learning as well. The goal of this paper is to show the effectiveness of a Facebook application named 201C;Wishdom201D; to teach English language based on cloud platform. This application tries to introduce English language in an authentic and communicative manner to the students, where they have to assume different roles (i.e. avatar) to achieve a particular goal. For that purpose they communicate with the other avatar and participate in several quizzes. This study shows the performance of a group of students who played 201C;Wishdom201D; game and take a quiz as a part of their assessment. Their performance has been presented to show their success rate in learning English. The performance of the application is also measured based on Facebook Graph API. In addition, platform as a service (PaaS) of cloud computing from Heroku has been integrated to host the application and its compatibility is checked in this study

Estimation of RFID Tag Population Size by Gaussian Estimator

Radio Frequency IDenti cation (RFID) systems are prevalent in all sorts of daily life endeavors. In this thesis we propose a new method to estimate RFID tag population size. We have named our algorithm Gaussian Estimation of RFID Tags, namely, GERT. We present GERT under both {0,1} and {0,1,e} channel models, and in both cases the estimator we use is a well justi ed Gaussian random variable for large enough frame size based on Central Limit Theorem for triangular arrays. The most prominent feature of GERT is the quality with which it estimates a tag population size. We support all the required approximations with detailed analytical work and account for all the approximation errors when we consider the overall quality of the estimation. Our simulation results agree well with analytical ones. GERT, based on standardized frame slotted Aloha protocol, can estimate any tag population size with desired level of accuracy using fewer number of frame slots than previously proposed algorithms

What do your lockdown reading habits reveal?

The days of COVID-19 have given many of us mental space to introspect and to think clearly and differently. Perhaps it is important to remind people of all persuasions of the benefits of reading that can remedy boredom and overcome anxiety. Reading can be a good way to spend spare time. It is a panacea for the ennui of the educated, especially during the lockdown period. In most cases, readers do not have to follow any schedule and can consult reading materials in their own time and space

Rokeya from a comparative literary perspective

IN MY doctoral study titled Introducing Rokeya’s Plural Feminism (University of Portsmouth, 2007), I sought to unearth the rich treasure of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s (1880–1932) feminist writing and to compare it with that of two established English feminist writers, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) and Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), and two postcolonial ones Attia Hosain (1913-98) and Monica Ali (1967). My comparative study aimed at introducing Rokeya and her work to a wide-ranging readership and at revealing the relevance of her overarching feminist ideas to international feminisms beyond the borders of the South Asian subcontinent

Visiting Norwich, a UNESCO City of literature

The Writers’ Centre Norwich (WCN), the University of East Anglia and other bodies hold national and international literary festivals and events in the city all the year round. In 1970, thanks to the initiative of writer and academic Malcolm Bradbury (1932-2000), UEA became the first British university to introduce a Masters programme in Creative Writing whose graduates include many literary giants, such as, Rose Tremain (1943-), Ian McEwan (1948-) and the 2017 Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro (1954-). Because of these and other literary significances, in 2012, UNESCO declared Norwich a “City of Literature” and it is by far one of 28 such cities worldwide

Ban smoking during Ramadan

REMEMBER once, as I was about to enter a mosque in Penang, I saw the imam smoking hurriedly before he walked in to lead the Zohor prayer. At a masjid in Kuala Lumpur, as I stood in a saf (prayer row) to perform the solat, a smoker stood beside me. I suspected that, like the imam in Penang, this man also had a few puffs before entering the masjid as I could detect the strong cigarette odour. I was irritated and distracted by the smell permeating from him. It was difficult to concentrate. I encounter this often at other masjid. Once, I saw a man in uniform on a motorbike having a puff before riding away. Another incident was when I was at a clinic and could smell smoke from the counter employee. Don’t get me started on public toilets because some smell strongly of smoke despite no smoking signs. I have seen fathers smoking in family cars, exposing family members to secondhand smoke. I have seen teens smoking secretly at school compounds or toilets

Feminism as Islamophobia: a review of misogyny charges against Islam

One important feature of Islamophobia is to caricature Islam as misogynistic and oppressive to women and thus to advance imperialist hegemony. This “gendered Islamophobia” stigmatizes the religion even though, compared to other world religions, its treatment of women is arguably preferable and more enlightened. Historically, one treasonous use of feminism has been to misappropriate it in order to serve colonial interests and support imperialist wars of occupation that repress subjugated people including women and children. This article argues that ignorance about, and prejudice against, Islam contribute to portraying it as a misogynistic creed. Wrong notions of Islam lead many feminists in Muslim societies to denigrate Islamic teachings and borrow Western ideas to advance women’s causes. Lampooning Islam and replicating Western feminist ideas in Muslim lands have served neither women nor feminism. Such feminist tendencies rather give a bad name to the women’s rights movement and fuel controversy, anger and resentment among Muslims

English literary studies: including Islamic perspectives in pedagogy and practice

Proponents of the integration of Islam into English literary studies seek, by way of presenting Islamic worldviews in relation to the life-worlds that English texts presumably promote, to inform (Muslim) students and practitioners of the subject about possible untoward influences in order to help them withstand cultural captivity and lifestyle effects. This is part of the wider concept of integrating Islam into human knowledge, which functions across a broad range of subject areas and generally refers to a method of looking at academic disciplines from Islamic perspectives and enlightening the reader about relevant Islamic teachings. Based on this theoretical premise, in this article I focus on the need for and three important ways of teaching English literature: inculcating Islamic/moral values, identifying predominant themes and ideas inherent in literary texts and looking at them from Islamic perspectives, and reforming the curriculum

The unspeaking subaltern: Female domestic workers in Dhaka

Although Bangladesh is one of the largest suppliers of interstate female domestic workers, most Bangladeshi female domestic helps work in urban and rural areas within the country. Dhaka, the capital and main city, has the highest concentration of female domestic service workers in the country. Compared to those Bangladeshi women who dare and manage to embark on foreign shores in search of economic opportunities, those who remain in the country and work as domestic workers come from more vulnerable and lower social strata, and from more impoverished families of mainly rural and slum backgrounds. Again, compared to those who work as domestic workers in rural areas, their counterparts in urban settings have more social disadvantages and are more likely to be subject to domestic violence and other forms of injustice. They live in, and do chores within, the four walls of the home and hence have little opportunity to socialise beyond the immediate confines of the house or to share with others their lived experiences and the treatment they receive from employing family members. Their silences, exclusions and relative invisibility make them perhaps the worst unspeaking subaltern. Often there are media reports on the oppression and exploitation of Bangladeshi domestic workers overseas, especially in the Gulf region. However, the stories of Dhaka’s female domestic helps are largely untold and unheard of. They are unlettered, unaware of the world beyond the domestic orbit and, when subjected to injustice, unable to challenge their disproportionately dominant employers. Sporadic reports that appear in the local media tell us very little about the full extent of their ground-level, quotidian experiences. Hence, Gayatri Spivak’s justly famous argument about the inability of the subaltern to speak or to have a voice is highly pertinent to the plight of Dhaka’s female domestic workers. Reflecting on their live-in and work experiences as household employees and as members of the secondary labour force, this research will contribute new perspectives on Spivak’s notion of the forcibly muted subaltern in relation to the plight of female domestic workers in Dhaka whose subalternity is perhaps more insidiously inhuman. Based on the backgrounds, and taking into account the enormity of the plight, of the female domestic helps in Dhaka, I will describe their experiences, explore their social origins, shed light on their relationships with the members of the employing family and discuss factors that exacerbate their vulnerability and restrict their capability to assert their rights

Thoughts from my one-evening Ramadan experience

It seems that the majority of Muslims are far away from the correct teachings of Islam and have reduced their religion to a set of rituals and ceremonies that may smack of religiosity but are devoid of substance. This suggests that people who deliver speeches on Islam on a regular basis have a responsibility to touch on down-to-earth issues and offer the audience advice on the problems which occur at each stage of our everyday life. Unfortunately, many speakers on Islam repeat only issues of rituals, and that in an otherworldly fashion