Dhaka, Jan 16 (UNB) - Adventure movie in Bangla ‘Hridoyer Rongdhonu’ (Life in Rainbow) will be premiered at 17th Dhaka International Film Festival 2019 on Thursday.

The movie directed by Razibul Hossain will be screened at 7:30 pm at the Public Library Auditorium in the city as part of the ongoing month-long film festival.

The movie in ‘Hridoyer Rongdhonu’ (Life in Rainbow) was selected as “View Corner” at Goa Film Bazaar in last year.

The director told UNB that the movie will be released very soon in the theaters across the country. 

Asian Institute of Media and Communication Bangladesh (AIMC) informed that its first Asian Premier was held on 24th November at QUBE 2 Hall at 2 pm in India tourist city Goa.

'Life in Rainbow' is a story of four aspiring youth (3 boys and 1 girl). They are friends. They have everything in their life. One day their life turns into a mystery. They got a call from a mysterious character as the mysterious character knew everything about them (Mina, Shams, Shojon and Khing) and their desire, expectations, inner calls etc.

He offered them a trip, "If you dare enough to take any challenges you can join a trip, a trip to an unknown destination!" They never thought this journey would make them a new person with enlightens of inner knowledge, skills and personality.

After two years of straggling for censorship certificate from Bangladesh Film Censor Board, the film got finally received it on October 23, 2018. 

Dhaka, Jan15 (UNB) - The tenth edition of Chobi Mela, the most prestigious photography festival in Asia, will begin on 28 February.

In a press conference held at Drik’s new gallery in Panthapath on Tuesday, the organisers updated the media on upcoming festival programme. 

The festival will continue with many happenings till 9 March 2019. 
 
Chobi Mela - International Festival of Photography is put together biannually by Drik Picture Library Ltd. and Pathshala South Asian Media Institute. Since its inception in 2000, Chobi Mela has been the most significant photography event in Asia and a regular biennale.
 
At the press conference Festival Director Shahidul Alam presented an overview of the upcoming festival and introduced the newly formed Chobi Mela advisory board members.

Members include prominent Indian economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, former Deputy Governor of Bangladesh Bank Khondokar Ibrahim Khaled, human rights activist Khushi Kabir, Nepali publisher, writer and editor Kunda Dixit, Indian photographer Raghu Rai, economist Rehman Sobhan, literary critic, activist and historian Serajul Islam Choudhury and human rights activist and former Advisor to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh Sultana Kamal. 

Shahidul Alam also shared that eminent writer Arundhati Roy from India will be visiting upcoming Chobi Mela to give an artist talk.
 
The theme for Chobi Mela X is ‘Place’. Curated by ASM Rezaur Rahman, Munem Wasif, Sarker Protick, Tanzim Wahab along with guest curators including Naeem Mohaiemen and Sabih Ahmed, the tenth edition of the festival will be more exciting with all venues situated in Dhanmondi area.

The Drik-Pathshala under construction building in Panthapath will be the main venue along with other galleries of Alliance Francaise de Dhaka, Drik Gallery 1 & 2 (Dhanmondi) and Drik Gallery 3 (Panthapath). 

Chobi Mela X also brings an exciting list of events. Artist’s talks, panel discussions and curated slideshow will be organised around the theme ‘Place’ at Goethe Institut Bangladesh auditorium while Pathshala South Asian Media Institute is the educational venue where workshops, and portfolio reviews will be held.
 
Chobi Mela X is to feature over 27 exhibitions with works from 35 artists spanning 20 countries. 

The festival has also engaged a group of young Bangladeshi artists to produce site-specific artwork for the festival. To investigate the theme ‘Place’, artists from different backgrounds of painting, drawing, animation, sculpture, photography, video, sound and installation will stretch the medium physically and conceptually.
 
The festival hosts workshops by photo practitioners from all around the world. This includes workshop by Peter Bialobrzeski, noted for his excellent photography teaching background. 

As part of the festival, a bookmaking workshop by Valentina Abenavoli will be arranged with a group of photographers for hands on training on making their own photobooks while world renowned German publisher and bookmaker Gerhard Steidl will also give an artist talk on photobooks.
 
Ensuring access for the general public has always been an important part of the festival and mobile exhibitions on rikshaw vans have become its trademark. The mobile exhibition will travel all over Dhaka city including remote locations. 

The festival is free and open to the public.

Sydney, Jan 15 (Xinhua/UNB) -- Researchers at Australia's University of Queensland (UQ) have made a major breakthrough in ultrasound technology which they believe could greatly improve technologies, from medical imaging, to unmanned aerial vehicles.

The team described on Monday how they used modern nanofabrication and nanophotonics to make extremely precise ultrasound sensors, small enough to fit on a silicon chip.

"We've developed a near perfect ultrasound detector, hitting the limits of what the technology is capable of achieving," Prof. Warwick Bowen, from UQ's Precision Sensing Initiative, said.

"We're now able to measure ultrasound waves that apply tiny forces, comparable to the gravitational force on a virus, and we can do this with sensors smaller than a millimetre across," Bowen said.

With ultrasound being used across a range of technologies, the team believe that the development could lead to any number of exciting breakthroughs.

"Ultrasound is used for medical ultrasound, often to examine pregnant women, as well as for high resolution biomedical imaging to detect tumours and other anomalies," Bowen explained.

"It's also commonly used for spatial applications, like in the sonar imaging of underwater objects or in the navigation of unmanned aerial vehicles."

Research leader Dr. Sahar Basiri-Esfahani says the accuracy of the new technology, sensitive enough to hear the random forces from surrounding air molecules, could change how scientists understand biology.

"This could fundamentally improve our understanding of how these small biological systems function," Basiri-Esfahani said.

"A deeper understanding of these biological systems may lead to new treatments, so we're looking forward to seeing what future applications emerge."

Bulgaria, Jan 13 (AP/UNB) — Plovdiv, the oldest city in Bulgaria, has been officially inaugurated as the European Capital of Culture for 2019.

Some 50,000 people gathered on a main square Saturday to watch the opening show dubbed "We are all colors" with 1,500 local and foreign artists on several stages. The entertainment included traditional Bulgarian folk dancers, 200 choir singers, a brass orchestra and a musical and laser spectacle.

Squeezed between the Balkan and the Rodopi Mountains, Bulgaria's second-largest city has survived for thousands of years on the crossroads between Western Europe and the Middle East. Plovdiv is in central Bulgaria, 144 kilometers  (90 miles) southeast of Sofia, the capital.

Plovdiv claims to be the oldest continually inhabited European city, with more than 6,000 years of history. Evidence of that can be seen in many architectural landmarks dating back to Thracian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman times.

The city on both sides of the Maritsa River is also known for its ethnic diversity. Many of its 340,000 inhabitants belong to the country's Turkish, Roma, Armenian, Greek and Jewish minorities, all of which have quite a strong influence on the city's vibrant cultural life.

Examples of this influence were presented during the opening music, light and dance show under the motto "Together."

Some 350 cultural events are scheduled in Plovdiv this year, including one exhibition featuring fragments of the Berlin Wall to mark 30 years since its fall and another with 30 short films and debates on how art can foster liberty.

Plovdiv, the first Bulgarian city to become a European culture capital, was also named among The New York Times' list of 52 places to go in 2019. It shares the 2019 culture title with the Italian city of Matera.

"This year will be a turning point for Plovdiv. We have spent four years to prepare all events. I'm sure that Plovdiv will never be the same," Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva, the art director of Plovdiv 2019, told reporters.

Las Vegas, Jan 12 (AP/UNB) — Many of the hottest new gadgets are also the nosiest ones.

This week's CES tech show in Las Vegas was a showcase for cameras that livestream the living room, bathroom mirrors that offer beauty tips and gizmos that track the heartbeats of unborn children. All will collect some kind of data about their users, whether photos or monitor readings; how well they'll protect it and what exactly they plan do with it are the important and often unanswered questions.

These features can be useful — or at least fun — but they all open the door for companies and their workers to peek into your private life. Just this week, The Intercept reported that Ring, a security-camera company owned by Amazon, gave a variety of employees and executives access to recorded and sometimes live video footage from customers' homes.

Our data-driven age now forces you to weigh the usefulness of a smart mirror against the risk that strangers might be watching you in your bathroom. Even if a company has your privacy in mind, things can go wrong: Hackers can break in and access sensitive data, or your ex might hold onto a video feed long after you've broken up.

"It's not like all these technologies are inherently bad," says Franziska Roesner, a University of Washington computer security and privacy researcher.

But she said the industry is still trying to figure out the right balance between providing useful services and protecting people's privacy in the process.

AMAZON'S VIDEO FEEDS

Like other security devices, Ring cameras can be mounted outside the front door or inside the home; a phone app lets you see who's there. But the Intercept said the Amazon-owned company was also allowing some high-level engineers in the U.S. to view customers' video feeds, while others in the Ukraine office could view and download any customer video file.

In a statement, Ring said some Amazon employees have access to videos that are publicly shared through the company's Neighbors app, which aims to create a network of security cameras in an area. Ring also says employees get additional video from users who consent to such sharing.

At CES, Ring announced an internet-connected video doorbell that fits into the peepholes in apartment or dorm-room doors. Though it doesn't appear Ring uses facial recognition yet, records show that Amazon recently filed a patent application for a facial-recognition system involving home security cameras.

LIVING ROOM LIVESTREAM

It's one thing to put cameras in our own homes, but Alarm.com wants us to also put them in other people's houses.

Alarm's Wellcam is for caretakers to watch from afar and is mostly designed to check in on aging relatives. Someone who lives elsewhere can use a smartphone to "peek in" anytime, says Steve Chazin, vice president of products.

The notion of placing a camera in someone else's living room might feel unsettling.

Wellcam says video streaming isn't started until someone activates it from a phone and then it stops as soon as the person turns it off. Chazin says such cameras are "becoming more acceptable because loved ones want to know that the ones they care about are safe."

Just be sure you trust whom you're giving access to. You can't turn off the camera unless you unplug it.

BATHROOM CAMERAS

French company CareOS showcased a smart mirror that lets you "try on" different hairstyles. Facial recognition helps the mirror's camera know which person in a household is there, while augmented-reality technology overlays your actual image with animation on how you might look.

CareOS expects hotels and salons to buy the $20,000 Artemis mirror - making it more important that personal data is protected.

"We know we don't want the whole world to know about what's going on in the bathroom," co-founder Chloe Szulzinger said.

The mirror doesn't need an internet connection to work, she said. The company says it will abide by Europe's stronger privacy rules, which took effect in May, regardless of where a customer lives. Customers can choose to share their information with CareOS, but only after they've explicitly agreed to how it will be used.

The same applies for the businesses that buy and install the mirror. Customers can choose to share some information — such as photos of the hair cut they got last time they visited a salon — but the businesses can't access anything stored in user profiles unless users specifically allow them to.

BODILY DATA

Some gadgets, meanwhile, are gathering intimate information.

Yo Sperm sells an iPhone attachment that tests and tracks sperm quality. To protect privacy, the company recommends that users turn their phones to airplane mode when using the test. The company says data stays on the phone, within the app, though there's a button for sharing details with a doctor.

Owlet, meanwhile, plans to sell a wearable device that sits over a woman's pregnant belly and tracks fetal heartbeats. The company's privacy policy says personal data gets collected. And users can choose to share heartbeat information with researchers studying stillbirths.

Though such data can be useful, Forrester analyst Fatemeh Khatibloo warns that these devices aren't regulated or governed by U.S. privacy law. She warns that companies could potentially sell data to insurance companies who could find, for instance, that someone was drinking caffeine during a pregnancy — potentially raising health risks and policy premiums.