Nokia Asha 300

In these days of touchscreen phones, the Asha 300 may seem like something of a relic. But rather unusually, it does combine a small touchscreen with a numeric keypad, so it can be used either like a traditional "dumb" phone with through the keymat, or by using the simple touchscreen interface.

By "simple", we mean that this is an old-style resistive panel that is also quite small at 2.4" in size with 240 x 320 pixels in resolution. On the back is a 5 megapixel camera capable of VGA resolution video capture. There's a media player, FM radio, microSD slot and quad-band 3.5G support but no WiFi.

This is a Series 40 feature phone rather than a smartphone, but you can still download Java applications and the Asha 300 comes with a preinstalled version of Angry Birds Lite plus a web browser and social networking tools.

Nokia X2-02

It might seem that these old products are hanging around Nokia's line-up like a bad smell, but the X2-02 is a rather interesting device with some useful features compared to the original X2, and with a price ticket of just €60 then it looks like pretty decent value overall.

This is a dual-SIM device, so it can support two active SIM cards at the same time. The second SIM card can be hot swapped via a slot in the side. There is also a built-in SIM manager that can support up to five different SIMs.

The X2-02 is a dual-band GSM device that supports GPRS and EDGE data, so it is hardly a speed demon when it comes to connectivity. On the front is a simple 2.2" 240 x 320 pixel TFT display, on the back is a basic 2 megapixel camera.

It gets more interesting when you see that the X2-02 also has an MP3 player, Bluetooth 2.1, has a microSD slot and an FM radio. One very unusual feature in a phone of this price is an FM transmitter, so you can play music from the phone onto a stereo or car audio system.. or even another phone with an FM receiver.

Although the 900 and 800 look very similar, the display on the Lumia 900 is now a 4.3" 480 x 800 pixel ClearBlack panel, which is significantly larger than the 800 (although it has the same resolution). The Lumia 900 also supports LTE (4G) data along with a variety of HSPA+, UMTS and GSM/GPRS options. From the technical specifications, the Lumia 900 could easily be a world phone, but AT&T seem to have it available only to them.. for now.

Inside is a 1.4 GHz CPU with 512MB of RAM and 16GB of non-expandable flash memory. On the back is an 8 megapixel camera with 720p HD video capture capabilities, and the Lumia 900 also has a front-facing camera for video calling. WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity are also included, and the Lumia 900 comes with GPS and turn-by-turn navigation.

The temple at last

Ada Chai forest station looked forlorn in this deep forest -- an outstation with a pale existence. We walked down a long wooden pier that had developed gaping holes through its rotten wood planks. At the end of it was the wooden station its planks blacked by continuous rain, damp, musty smell hanging in the air. The lanterns could hardly beat the gloom of the gathering dusk as we entered the ramshackle station. The dampness enters your inside and you feel dizzy. I was taken aback by the unbelievably sorry living condition of the foresters.

Naturally Narail

WE were supposed to visit Narail months ago. But then many moons moaned by and all our plans collapsed one after another for one reason or another. Finally when we found time, it began with a disaster.

Cambodia by Bicycle

"Whenever you see three Cambodians, remember the fourth one who was killed by the Khmer Rouge.” A friend shared this sobering thought on the eve of a special adventure I was about to embark on: a bicycling trip from Bangkok to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. While this undercurrent of sadness was a part of the trip, my adventure was also filled with unexpected challenges, friendly people, and awe at seeing the magnificent ruins at Angkor.

After spending our first day (March 14) cycling in Thailand, we reached the Cambodian border at Prum at noon of the second day. We bicycled onward 17 km to Pailin and stopped there for the night. Pailin is famous for two things: sapphire mines nearby and several retired Khmer Rouge officials. Luckily I did not run into the latter while exploring the town in the afternoon. The streets of Pailin were torn up for installing sewage pipes and it was dusty and hot. Many more children than I had seen in Thailand played in the streets. The market reminded me of the bazaars of the smaller towns of Bangladesh, with the vendors waiting with their offerings while their children entertained.

The next day was our most difficult: 92km from Pailin to Battambang, the second largest town of Cambodia. Expecting another hot day (mid-30s) we started bicycling at 7am. Having braved Dhaka's traffic and shattered roads for many years, riding through Pailin's potholes was easy for me. But just outside the town I ran into trouble. That's because we started climbing the foothills of the Cardamom Mountains.

Tiny Primate Is Ultrasonic Communicator

They belong to a relict lineage of primates that gave rise to monkeys and apes about 60 million years ago, and for the past 45 million years tarsiers have been largely unchanged. Although tarsiers are important "living fossils," they are difficult to study in the wild. Scarcely five inches high, they are nocturnal and subsist mostly on a diet of insects, along with some small vertebrates such as lizards and snakes.

Nathaniel Dominy, an associate professor of anthropology at Dartmouth, describes the tarsier's ultrasonic vocalizations as "extreme, and comparable to the highly specialized vocalizations of bats and dolphins, which are used primarily for echolocation."

Memory Strengthened by Stimulating Key Site in Brain

"The entorhinal cortex is the golden gate to the brain's memory mainframe," explained senior author Dr. Itzhak Fried, professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "Every visual and sensory experience that we eventually commit to memory funnels through that doorway to the hippocampus. Our brain cells must send signals through this hub in order to form memories that we can later consciously recall."

Fried and his colleagues followed seven epilepsy patients who already had electrodes implanted in their brains to pinpoint the origin of their seizures. The researchers monitored the electrodes to record neuron activity as memories were being formed.

Using a video game featuring a taxi cab, virtual passengers and a cyber city, the researchers tested whether deep-brain stimulation of the entorhinal cortex or the hippocampus altered recall. Patients played the role of cab drivers who picked up passengers and traveled across town to deliver them to one of six requested shops.

Need for a shield against financial contagion

The capital market of Bangladesh has seen its worst in recent times. In the frontier of multivariate assumptions and perceptions, we believe that there are lessons to be learned from the mistakes and more importantly, reforms have to be initiated to avoid a financial contagion.

The term financial contagion was first coined in July 1997, when the currency crisis (better known as the Asian Crisis) in Thailand quickly spread through East Asia. The term derived through its medical inference, talks about small shocks that initially affects particular sectors of the economy or financial intermediaries but eventually affects the entire economy.

We would like to bring in context certain events of the Asian Crisis that affected the emerging economies in 1997. We will similarise certain events of the crisis with the Bangladeshi stockmarket in terms of money flow and policy phenomena.

This is necessary for two reasons. Firstly, Bangladesh has been identified as an emerging economy for the next decade and therefore, learning from the development of previous emerging economies and reformation is to our benefit.

Secondly, the Bangladesh stockmarket has already faced such recession and the economy has started to show a phenomenon that was common to the pre-crisis events of those economies.

Furthermore, we will put forward some of the extra ordinary policy and project reformations that have taken place in countries like Thailand and Malaysian stockmarket for the betterment of their whole economy. The intent is to shield Bangladesh from a stockmarket debacle in the future because of flawed vision and policy. The next decade of economic growth has to be facilitated by the capital market, not hindered by it.

Being labelled as an emerging economy is a positive note for all of us. But the question will remain as to whether we are prepared to handle the growth process or not. Without dynamic management of regulations, the economy can easily suffer as the stockmarket has suffered from policy wise inertia. In such cases, Bangladesh will not be the first or a unique case either. Countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and South Korea faced the Asian Crisis in 1997 for similar reasons while playing the role of emerging economies in those times. In the early 90s, when these countries enjoyed GDP growth of 8 percent-12 percent, they were called by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as 'Asian Miracles'. In those times, there were certain events that can be considerable, although we should keep in mind that these are cursory descriptions rather than a fully comprehensive analysis.

Bank Alfalah group CEO in town

Atif Bajwa, the newly appointed group chief executive officer of Bank Alfalah, arrived in Dhaka yesterday on a two-day tour, the bank said in a statement.

During the visit, Bajwa will meet the employees of the bank, regulators and valued clients.

Bajwa has over 29 years of international banking experience and has worked in Europe, US, Far East, the Middle East and Pakistan.

He started his career with Citibank as a corporate banker in 1982 and handled different assignments with Citi in Pakistan, New York, Bahrain and Central and Eastern Europe.

He also worked with ABN AMRO Bank, Mashreq Bank and MCB Bank, according to the statement.