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A growing cohort of women across Afghanistan are producing masks for their communities, covering a shortage of this simple yet lifesaving piece of equipment. Shukria, a 24-yearold from the town of Nakarabad, produces about 100 masks a day. She learned about the implications of COVID-19 through a country-wide information campaign, run by the Citizens Charter Afghanistan Project, with financing from IDA and the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund.

The campaign empowered us to take the dangers of the coronavirus seriously, Shukria recalls.

The Citizens Charter and the Womens Economic Empowerment Rural Development Project (WEE-RDP) are at the forefront of running public awareness campaigns in rural areas. So far, the Citizens Charter has held meetings for council members and mullahs in some 12,000 communities in 124 districts across Afghanistan. Thousands of rural Afghans are now aware of the COVID-19 pandemic and how to protect themselves and their families.

In addition to raising awareness about COVID-19, IDA is also helping to provide a critical lifeline to households whose livelihoods have been upended by the pandemic. Preventive measures put in place to slow the spread of COVID-19, such as lockdowns and border closures, have increased the number of Afghan households facing food insecurity and hunger. Most people in our village are already poor and they supported their families with daily jobs, says Bakhtiar, a 25-year-old daily-wage worker from Mandozai village, which has been hard hit by COVID-19. In my case, our entire family contracted COVID-19, so we couldnt work and now we face economic difficulties.

Through the Dastarkhwan-e Meli social safety net program the Afghan government is helping villagers like Bakhtiar. Distribution drives are underway, providing relief packages to households facing food insecurity and hunger due to COVID-19. The relief packageswhich provide 2-3 weeks of rations for a familyare locally sourced, creating jobs and stimulating local economies. The program is supported by the Citizens Charter Afghanistan Project and the COVID-19 Relief Effort for Afghan Communities and Households.

The Dastarkhwan-e Meli relief distribution drives will ultimately reach more than 5 million households in the countrys most vulnerable communities.

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Helping Afghanistan Fight the COVID-19 Pandemic - World Bank Group

WASHINGTON, June 24, 2021 TheWorld Banks Board of Executive Directors today approved a $191 million credit to Bangladesh and a $18 million grant to Afghanistan to help the countries strengthen the higher education sector and respond better to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Higher Education Acceleration Transformation Project the first World Bank-supported regional education project in South Asiawill support regional collaboration in the higher education sector, including student mobility through equivalence programs, credit transfer schemes, and university twinning arrangements within the region. It will also help more women access quality higher education, which will result in increased female labor force participation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit hard the higher education sector in South Asia, causing more dropouts and fewer enrolments. Female students are likely to be disproportionately impacted, further exacerbating the existing gender gap in higher education. The project will support pandemic and emergency response and build systemic resilience in the higher education sector with a specific focus on digitization.

For our collective future, higher education is a necessity, not a choice. As Bangladesh aspires to achieve an upper middle-income status, the country needs to invest in its youth to create a skilled and globally competitive workforce, said Mercy Tembon, World Bank Country Director for Bangladesh and Bhutan. This financing will help Bangladesh strengthen quality and relevance of tertiary education as well as ensure business continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It will establish a South Asian Higher Education Portal, hosted in Bangladesh, to facilitate the virtual mobility' of students, by allowing students from the registered universities to take courses for credit outside their home country. In addition to Bangladesh and Afghanistan, students from other South Asian countries will be able to access the portal. It will also strengthen regional cooperation among the National Research and Education networks (NRENs) and provide expanded access and connectivity for students. The project will upgrade the Bangladesh Research and Education Network (BdREN) and will offer a subsidized connectivity package to students and the participating universities in BdREN.

South Asia region has the second-lowest female labor force participation rate globally. To enable more women to access quality higher education, get better jobs, and become leaders, the project will build a network of womens universities and institutions, which will be initially anchored on the Asian University of Women in Chittagong, Bangladesh.

In Afghanistan, the higher education sector is growing rapidly. However, only 30 percent of the students at the tertiary level are women. The regional project will prepare the students, particularly the female students for working in leadership and decision-making positions, said Henry Kerali, World Bank Country Director for Afghanistan.

The project will help meet the increasing demand for quality higher education in South Asia. Further, it will also help South Asian countries benefit from regional cooperation in higher education and strengthen research and innovations capacities in the universities, said Mokhlesur Rahman, World Bank Task Team Leader of the project.

The credit is from the World Banks International Development Association (IDA), and has a 30-year term, including a five-year grace period. Bangladesh currently has the largest ongoing IDA program totaling over $14 billion.

Contacts

Washington

Diana Chung(202) 473-8357dchung1@worldbank.org

Dhaka

Mehrin Mahbub(880-2) 5566-7777mmahbub@worldbank.org

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World Bank Helps Improve Higher Education in Afghanistan and Bangladesh - Afghanistan - ReliefWeb

ISLAMABAD: The security team of the establishment will brief the Parliamentary Committee on National Security on developments with regard to Afghanistan and matters of national security on Thursday (July 1) at the Parliament House.

*Highly placed sources told The News here on Sunday that Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javaid Bajwa, DG ISI Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed and other high officials will attend the session.*

Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Mian Shahbaz Sharif, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Senator Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, JUI-F Parliamentary leader Maulana Asad Mahmood, BNP leader Sardar Muhammad Akhtar Mengal and ANP leader Ameer Haider Azam Khan Hoti, are among the members invited for the meeting. The slated meeting which has conspicuous significance in the backdrop of the situation prevailing in the war-torn country from where foreign occupying troops are vacating the country in a couple of weeks and the Taliban are increasingly capturing the vacated areas that will have an impact on Pakistan.

Afghan President Dr. Ashraf Ghani and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah have dashed to Washington for discussion with the US authorities pertaining to the upcoming situation and seeking their support for their administration, are also extremely perturbed about the affairs in their country.

The Thursday briefing will be in closed doors and 29-member committee will get an opportunity to avail a question-answer session, the sources said. It would be first meeting of the committee in about eight months as the last meeting in November last was boycotted by the opposition.

The sources said that the opposition leaders will mull over tomorrow (Tuesday) whether to attend the briefing or not. It is unlikely that Prime Minister Imran Khan would turn up for the meeting since he isn't a member of the committee constituted by the NA Speaker. Other members of the committee are Ms. Sherry Rehman (PPP), Mushtaq Ahmad (JI), Syed Muzaffar Hussain Shah (GDA), Syed Faisal Ali Sabazwari (MQM), Senator Hidayat ullah (Ind), Sardar Muhammad Shafiq Tarin (PkMAP), Muhammad Tahir Bizenjo (NP), Muhammad Qasim (BNP), Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haidri (JUI), Kamil Ali Agha (PML-Q), Dr. Shehzad Wasim (PTI), Dilawar Khan (Ind), Azam Nazir Tarrar (PML-N) and Anwar ul Haq Kakar (Ind) members from Senate while the other members from the NA are Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi (PTI), Chaudhary Tariq Bashir Cheema (PML-Q), Ghaus Bux Mehar (GDA), Dr. Khalid Maqbool Siddiquee (MQM), Nawabzada Shahzain Bugti (JWP), Khalid Hussain Magsi (BAP), Sheikh Rashid Ahmad (AML). Speaker Asad Qaisar is chairman of the committee. PTM MNA Mohsin Dawar is among special invitees. The sources pointed out that the parliamentary committee will also discuss some other subjects of national interest if it takes place according to the schedule

Original post:
Parliamentary body to be briefed on Afghanistan, national security - The News International

Research led by Kent and theSTFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratoryhas resulted in the discovery of a new rare topological superconductor, LaPt3P. This discovery may be of huge importance to the future operations of quantum computers.

Superconductors are vital materials able to conduct electricity without any resistance when cooled below a certain temperature, making them highly desirable in a society needing to reduce its energy consumption.

They manifest quantum properties on the scale of everyday objects, making them highly attractive candidates for building computers that use quantum physics to store data and perform computing operations, and can vastly outperform even the best supercomputers in certain tasks. As a result, there is an increasing demand from leading tech companies like Google, IBM and Microsoft to make quantum computers on an industrial scale using superconductors.

However, the elementary units of quantum computers (qubits) are extremely sensitive and lose their quantum properties due to electromagnetic fields, heat, and collisions with air molecules. Protection from these can be achieved by making more resilient qubits using a special class of superconductors called topological superconductorswhich in addition to being superconductors also host protected metallic states on their boundaries or surfaces.

Topological superconductors, such as LaPt3P, newly discovered through muon spin relaxation experiments and extensive theoretical analysis, are exceptionally rare and are of tremendous value to the future industry of quantum computing.

To ensure its properties are sample and instrument independent, two different sets of samples were prepared in theUniversity of Warwickand inETH Zurich. Muon experiments were then performed in two different types of muon facilities: in the ISIS Pulsed Neutron and Muon Source in the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and inPSI, Switzerland.

Dr. Sudeep Kumar Ghosh, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at KentsSchool of Physical Sciencesand Principle Investigator said: This discovery of the topological superconductor LaPt3P has tremendous potential in the field of quantum computing. Discovery of such a rare and desired component demonstrates the importance ofmuonresearch for the everyday world around us.

Reference: Chiral singlet superconductivity in the weakly correlated metal LaPt3P by P. K. Biswas, S. K. Ghosh, J. Z. Zhao, D. A. Mayoh, N. D. Zhigadlo, Xiaofeng Xu, C. Baines, A. D. Hillier, G. Balakrishnan and M. R. Lees, 4 May 2021, Nature Communications.DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22807-8

The paper is published inNature Communications(University of Kent: Dr. Sudeep K. Ghosh; STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory: Dr. Pabitra K. Biswas, Dr. Adrian D. Hillier; University of Warwick Dr. Geetha Balakrishnan, Dr. Martin R. Lees, Dr. Daniel A. Mayoh; Paul Scherrer Institute: Dr. Charles Baines; Zhejiang University of Technology: Dr. Xiaofeng Xu; ETH Zurich: Dr. Nikolai D. Zhigadlo; Southwest University of Science and Technology: Dr. Jianzhou Zhao).

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Rare Superconductor Discovered May Be Critical for the Future of Quantum Computing - SciTechDaily

June 24, 2021 In August 2021, the Academy of Finland will open a special funding call aimed at supporting the use of the EuroHPC supercomputing infrastructure, the introduction of quantum computers and the application of high-performance computing. The call opens on 11 August and closes on 6 October 2021.

The aim of the funding is to support the development of a diverse future computing ecosystem and the expansion of computing expertise into new sectors. The funding will support high-quality research related to the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, high-performance computing or the introduction of quantum computers as well as the utilisation of high-performance computing in various fields of research.

The funding can be applied for by multidisciplinary research teams and consortia composed of several teams. The total funding budget is 6 million euros for three years, starting in 2022. The funding is designed to promote scientific renewal and diversity, the quality of research and scientific impact as well as impact beyond academia. The development of skills and competences is a key cross-cutting theme in the call.

Applications are encouraged from different fields of research. In this way, the goal is to support the development of a diverse future computing ecosystem. The Academy encourages researchers from different fields to consider what new opportunities high-performance computing could offer and what skills should be developed in the fields concerned.

Inquiries and more information availableon the website of Academy of Finland.

Source: CSC

Read more from the original source:
Academy of Finland Call for Research into Use of HPC, Quantum Computers Opening in August - HPCwire