Day: October 21, 2020

ISLAMABAD: Chairman Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) Qibla Ayaz has emphasized for greater interfaith harmony to foil the sordid designs of enemy against Pakistan.

Addressing a news conference here on Wednesday, he said the minorities in Pakistan enjoy complete freedom as per the constitution of the country. On the other hand, the minorities are being targeted in India.

In his remarks on the occasion, Chairman National Commission for Minorities Chela Ram said a bill has been prepared to give legal effect to National Commission for Minorities.

He said this is an independent and strong commission and it is the first time in the country’s history that a Hindu has been made its Chairman.

ISLAMABAD: A delegation of All Pakistan Universities BPS Teachers Association (APUBTA) called on Chairman HEC Tariq Banuri at the HEC Secretariat and apprised him about the problems and challenges faced by the BPS faculty of public sector universities.

The meeting was also attended by Executive Director HEC Dr Shaista Sohail, Member (Operations and Planning) Dr Fateh Marri, Adviser (Administration and Coordination) Awais Ahmed, and Director (Quality Assurance) Aqeel Akhtar Khan.

The APUBTA representatives said that BPS faculty members comprise 88 per cent of the entire faculty in public sector universities, but were facing a systematic and multi-faced discrimination.

They demanded that HEC should set up a service structure for BPS faculty, including promotion rules, performance-based incentives, and relaxation in the post PhD experience. They said that BPS faculty is laboring under a sense of deprivation and demotivation because of the absence of such rules, inadequacies in benefits, and the burden of additional administrative work.

Chairman HEC assured the delegation that HEC’s role is to serve all faculty members, both BPS and TTS. He said that this was the first time that they had approached HEC, and that HEC will work closely with them to resolve the problems they faced, in order to promote the quality of teaching and research on an equitable basis.

Banuri asked them to translate their demands into a concrete proposal for the formulation of draft BPS Statutes. At the request of the Association, it was agreed that HEC will obtain the services of a qualified expert in administrative law to provide technical assistance to the Association for the drafting of the statutes.

The HEC secretariat will review and refine the proposals before submitting their recommendations to the Commission for a decision. This work could be completed within a period of three months.

The chairman also urged them to undertake consultations provide ideas on other critical issues, including the challenge of bringing about a convergence between the TTS and BPS into a single system, and how to encourage the best people to adopt teaching as a profession.

On the issue of post-PhD experience, the chairman requested Association members to provide concrete data so that a decision could be made after considering all relevant factors.

The APUBTA members expressed strong support for the range of initiatives introduced by the HEC to enhance the quality of education and research, including the new policies for undergraduate and graduate education, the new system for financing and promotion of research, and the new classification of research journals.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Oman have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in the field of Military Cooperation.

The signing ceremony was held at Defence Complex in Muscat and Pakistan Ambassador Ahsan Wagan and Secretary General, Ministry of Defence, Oman Muhammad bin Nasir bin Muhammad signed the MoU.

The MoU aims to frame the aspects of military cooperation between Oman and Pakistan in a way that enhances the existing cooperation and serves the common interests of the two friendly countries.

This MoU will surely contribute towards further strengthening Pak-Oman bilateral diplomatic relations in general and military cooperation in particular.

MIE: What can we expect beyond online lesson under the COVID-19? This event presents new style of remote tuition, eye-opening next generation experience-based lesson utilizing participant’s “body movement” which wouldn’t be possible for online lesson. The lesson employs mixed reality (MR) technology.

The contents of the lesson are “Let’s see invisible magnetic field.” Feel Physics sends lesson material to a high school in advance and conducts the lesson from its office located in another prefecture using Zoom. 19 high school students participate in the lesson and experience controlling a magnet by fingers and observing changing magnetic field with walking around with MR goggles. The company’s teacher gives educational guidance with monitoring students’ view displayed on MR headset through Zoom.

Voices of participating students

“I was excited wearing the MR headset and really enjoyed the lesson as even I was able to learn.” (1st grade student)

“Although invisible magnetic field is hard to understand, the lesson visualized it clearly to bring better understanding.” (2nd grade student)

“It’s intuitive and fun lesson as it was new experience to control virtual object in space.” (1st grade student)

“I was happy to experience things that we have talked as fantastic story.” (1st grade student)

Voice of the high school teacher

“Upon receipt of the equipment, students of STEM club started to play with it avidly. To my surprise, even students not joining any club activities came in. I rarely had to support them. A device making us feel future like the MR headset may have power to ignite students’ hearts. I would like to have more students experience this lesson.” (Teacher with the high school for 7 years)

About Feel Physics:

A start-up company mainly developing experience-oriented learning using MR goggle technology to blow a new wind towards educational business.

MADEJI: Two people who returned from Saudi Arabia were looted allegedly by a taxi driver outside Karachi, affectees told media Wednesday.

This was revealed by Muhammad Eidan Junejo, Muhammad Qasim Junejo and others, residents of village Sama Junejo near Madeji, while complaining to the media persons.

They said: “Our two villagers Amanullah Junejo and Haji Ahmed Junejo had gone to Saudi Arabia to earn livelihood. Both returned to Karachi and hired a private taxi to reach the village.”

They claimed that the taxi driver gave some intoxicated things to the villagers and deprived them of all their valuables adding one of them Haji Ahmed Junejo reached the village whereas another Amanullah Junejo is still missing.

They alleged that the car driver might have kidnapped Amanullah but Karachi police have done nothing as yet to recover him despite lodging a report which has astonished them and they are extremely worried. They demanded recovery of the villager and severe legal action against the criminals.

Chicago: Sphera, a leading global provider of Integrated Risk Management software, data and consulting services, today announced its Dynamic Risk Pathways solution, the industry’s first real-time, process safety management Digital Twin solution.

Sphera’s Dynamic Risk Pathways is the industry’s next generation Operational Risk Management (ORM) Digital Twin technology for modeling and predicting process safety risk exposure for defined risk scenarios. By using the real-time status information from asset integrity inspections, safety critical equipment, Internet of Things (IoT) sensor data, maintenance and operational activity, and deviations from normal operating conditions, operational teams are provided with a single, shared view of the impact on Major Accident Hazard (MAH) risk scenarios.

Dynamic Risk Pathways turns disparate data into actionable insights. It improves decision-making in evolving conditions while helping organizations move from a reactive position to a predictive and proactive approach. It provides an early-warning system so operators can see how impaired, degraded and missing process safety barriers increase the likelihood of a pathway developing into a near-miss, incident, or MAH situation. With real-time visibility, organizations can improve maintenance prioritization, asset integrity, safety assurance and production uptime.

“Traditionally, it has been difficult for organizations to view the data held in disparate systems to obtain a credible, real-time view of the status of their safeguarding barriers and process safety risk exposure,” said Scott Lehmann, Sphera’s vice president of product management for ORM. “Dynamic Risk Pathways brings all this data together allowing people across the organization to see where risk might be increasing against specific risk scenarios so they can make better decisions around where to intervene, what to prioritize and where additional risk mitigation is required.”

Dynamic Risk Pathways is available as a part of SpheraCloud, a Software as a Service platform built to leverage the power, security and flexibility of Microsoft’s Azure.

“Remaining safe, resilient and competitive requires organizations to make investments in innovative, data-driven technology,” said Paul Marushka, Sphera’s president and CEO. “Dynamic Risk Pathways connects data in a simple, clear way to aid proactive decision-making. Now operators can know that the plant is safe with data-based evidence to support it.”

About Sphera

Sphera creates a safer, more sustainable and productive world. Our innovative cloud-based risk management platform connects an unprecedented amount of information that leads to deeper insights across an enterprise. We operationalize, scale and optimize Integrated Risk Management strategies to help customers identify, manage, and mitigate risk in the areas of Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability (EHS and S), Operational Risk Management and Product Stewardship.