1/ 1/ I am grateful to Mizanour Rahman Chowdhury, Association for Land Reform and Development, Dhaka, for giving me fresh insights into many complex land reform issues in Bangladesh and Krishna Ghimire, UNRISD, Geneva, for streamlining my thoughts in this chapter.

My research goal is to build adaptive big data and cloud systems that can meet a spectrum of user requirements expressed using service level agreements (SLA) and service level objectives (SLO). During my PhD, I have worked on several angles of tracking and enforcing SLA/SLO guarantees in cloud systems, including in Mapreduce clusters, and NoSQL key-value storage systems. My future research goal...

The large stomach worm, Haemonchus contortus is an important pathogen of goats (Capra hircus) and sheep (Ovis aries). This paper describes characteristics of surface cuticular ridges (synlophe) of H. contortus adults from the two hosts. There were more ridges in H. contortus from goats compared to that from sheep. Total body length, vulvar morphology, spicule length and cervical papillae had be...

In a very recent paper, M. Rahman introduced a remarkable family of polynomials in two variables as the eigenfunctions of the transition matrix for a nontrivial Markov chain due to M. Hoare and M. Rahman. I indicate here that these polynomials are bispectral. This should be just one of the many remarkable properties enjoyed by these polynomials. For several challenges, including finding a gener...

Previous electrophysiological studies have shown that the commissural connections between the two superior colliculi are mainly inhibitory with fewer excitatory connections. However, the functional roles of the commissural connections are not well understood, so we sought to clarify the physiology of tectal commissural excitation and inhibition of tectoreticular neurons (TRNs) in the "fixation ...

This primary-source study of 4 medical works of the 13th century Muslim scholar Ibn Al-Nafis confirmed that his Kitab Al-Mujaz Fi Al-Tibb was authored as an independent book meant to be a handbook for medical students and practitioners not as an epitome of Kitab Al-Qanun of Ibn Sina as thought by recent historians. His huge medical encyclopedia, Al-Shamil, represents a wave of intense scientifi...

During the Sassanid Empire in Persia (226-652 AD), there was a renaissance of humanistic sciences, including medicine, in the city of Gondi-Shapur. When the Islamic center of power moved to Baghdad in about 750 AD, physicians of Gondi-Shapur, including the dean of the medical school (a Nestorian Christian), gradually moved to Baghdad constructing hospitals and medical schools. Aided by the Pers...