“We call this algorithm POP and it has proved to be highly accurate,” King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (KMITL) lecturer Asst Professor Chinnawat Surussavadee revealed this week. He led the KMITL research team, which created POP in collaboration with the Thailand Research Fund.

Chinnawat said his team focused on developing an efficient tool to predict and estimate rainfall, because Thailand lacks accurate information for effective water management, which is why it is regularly hit by drought and floods.

“There are not many rainfall stations in the country, and that’s why planners don’t have solid information in hand,” Chinnawat pointed out.

He explained that while a station can forecast the amount of rain that is expected to fall in its own area, this information cannot be used to represent the entire province.

“When rain falls here, it does not mean there is rain in all of Bangkok,” he said, adding that though the authorities already deployed radar in estimating rainfall, these devices were not very accurate because they focus on water elements in the cloud – not actual rain.

“Besides, radar devices do not comprehensively cover every part of Thailand,” he said.

Chinnawat said POP, which integrates information from 10 satellites, has proved to be efficient in estimating rainfall.

“We compared the information provided by POP against what is provided by rainfall stations,” he said, adding that POP has already been integrated in the ThailandRain app, which can be downloaded for free to both Android and iOS devices.

Chinnawat also developed WMApp – the first app to provide detailed weather forecasts for Southeast Asia. It can be downloaded for free to both Android and iOS devices and already has more than 150,000 users.

“People can also follow weather updates on the KMITL Forecasts Thai Weather Facebook page,” he said.

Digital Economy and Society Minister Pichet Durongkaveroj said the cybersecurity bill will help ensure national security in cyberspace, covering both public and private sector databases, while personal data protection will require the owners of data to give explicit consent before it can be used by other parties.

Owing to the global uptrend of cyberattacks on critical databases such as those storing data of hospital patients, bank clients, citizen IDs and other data, it is necessary to enact a bill that can tackle these threats that come in the form of malware, DDoS attacks and ransomware, etc.

According to Pichet, the bill will empower authorities to survey, prevent and mitigate threats faced by the country’s critical infrastructure, including those of public utilities, banks and financial institutions, energy sector, transport sector, public healthcare, government services and national security.

As chair of the Asean grouping in 2019, Thailand will also play a leading role in implementing regional precautionary measures to cope with cybersecurity threats, he said, adding that the government is also preparing to set up a national cybersecurity committee under the proposed legislation.

On the personal data-protection bill, Pichet said the proposed legislation will provide a legal framework on personal data ownership, data controllers, and data processors while requiring data users to obtain consent from data owners in an explicit manner. This means that data owners must be informed on mobile screens, for instance, stating the conditions and approval on data use.

In addition, data owners have the right to cancel their consent at any time afterwards except in terms of data concerning public healthcare and non-profit education. A national committee will also be set up to take charge of protecting personal data under the proposed legislation.

Pol Colonel Paisit Wongmuang, chief of the Department of Special Investigation (DSI), said law-enforcement and other authorities have been preparing to work together to prevent and suppress cybercrimes that affect the public well-being and national security. Representatives from the Armed Forces, Digital Economy and Society Ministry, Food and Drug Administration, among others are participating in preparatory sessions.

He said banks have also worked with the DSI on addressing the threat of customers’ data being stolen by cybercriminals, while the Justice Ministry has urged the agency to coordinate preventive and suppression measures. For example, DSI was involved in tackling recent Bitcoin scams, fraud and embezzlement via the Internet.

However, cybercriminals have become more sophisticated and can evade the law if their servers are located outside the country, he said, noting that it takes cybercriminals only a couple of minutes to commit a crime. Hence, he said, law-enforcement needs to be vigilant and equipped with sophisticated tools to deal with them.

Fraud via call centres, violation of intellectual property rights and illegal online gambling are among the top cybercrimes in Thailand.

Thirty-one years ago, Pavornvit “Mung Ming” Srisahaburi, was conceived outside his mother’s womb in a lab in Chulalongkorn Hospital. Today, he is an engineer and a father.

“My wife and my son are perfectly healthy,” he told reporters at a press conference at Chulalongkorn University yesterday. Pavornvit’s son “Delta” was conceived naturally and delivered naturally on Sunday.

This confirms that people conceived with the help of assisted reproductive technology through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) are healthy and fertile, and the technique is “quite safe”, Chulalongkorn’s fertility specialist Assoc Professor Kamthorn Pruksananonda said.

Dr Kamthorn was part of Professor Pramuan Virutamasen’s team that conducted IVF for Pavornvit’s mother 31 years ago. According to Pramuan, decades ago many questions were raised regarding the morality of the procedure and the safety of the baby, as it required that the egg be fertilised by sperm outside of the body and then later put back into the mother’s uterus.

“Many asked, ‘Will the baby live a normal life with a body and mind like naturally conceived people?’ or ‘Will the baby live a long life’?” he recalled.

When the world’s first test-tube baby, Louise Joy Brown, was born 40 years ago, some people were aghast. Today, it has become a common medical practice with 7 million babies born via IVF across the world. Of them, about 20,000 were born to Thai parents, Kamthorn said.

The infertility specialist pointed noted that assisted reproductive techniques like IVF and oocyte cryopreservation – where eggs, sperm or embryos are frozen for later use – have additional uses beyond treatment for infertile couples.

Oocyte cryopreservation or egg freezing is a versatile fertility preservation option. It also allows cancer patients to preserve their eggs, sperm or embryos before undergoing chemotherapy or radiation therapy, which often causes infertility. Having a bunch of healthy eggs at hand for future IVF allows cancer survivors the chance to have a healthy baby, Kamthorn added.

It allows a woman to preserve her healthiest egg cells, while devoting her prime period of fertility to higher education or career success. This allows a woman to delay childbirth to later years without fear that “old” egg cells may lead to genetic problems, he said.

Big corporations like Facebook, Apple and Google have offered egg-freezing facilities to their women employees as many choose to focus on climbing the career ladder before having a family.

Assoc Professor Wisan Sereepapong, from Chulalongkorn’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, added that these technologies can ease the pressure from a woman’s ageing crisis as well. Most Thai women now get married much later compared to previous generations, resulting in problems with conception and healthy pregnancy.

Thailand’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is merely 1.5, the second lowest in the region after Singapore and much lower than the 2.1 replacement rate recommended by the World Bank and World Health Organisation, he said.

Technology and morality must be in balance, said Professor Suttipong Wacharasindhu, dean of Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Medicine and a Chulalongkorn Hospital director.

Without good guidelines, assisted reproductive technologies may be used for ill purposes such as non-medical sex selection, commercial donation and surrogacy, Dr Suttipong said.

In recent years, a wealthy Japanese man commissioned as many as 13 children from multiple Thai surrogate mothers, claiming that he wanted them to inherit his fortune.

Photo credit: JS100radio

On his way to the bridge, however, he passed a group of young street artists singing songs and decided to donate everything he had to the group.

His donation ended up saving his life and the incident went viral on social media after passers-by took photos of the incident on the King Taksin Bridge and reported it to a traffic radio station, JS100.

The station published the photos of about

10 male students from Watsuthiwararam School, surrounding a man. They reportedly tried to calm him down and persuaded him to change his mind about wanting to commit suicide.

Yannawa police heard of the incident through the station and went to the scene, where officers helped to calm him down.

JS100 station staff later found the group of students and asked them what had happened.

Photo credit: JS100radio

Sitthichart Maliwan, a Mathayom 6 student, told them he and his nine friends were playing music near the bridge when a 30-year-old man who spoke Chinese twice approached them and gave them 100 and 50 Chinese yuan (Bt475 and Bt237).

Sittichart, who has been learning Mandarin for some years, rushed over to the man, giving the money back and saying it was too much. “He refused to take the money back, saying he no longer wanted anything. He also tried to hand over his mobile phone to me and said something that implied he wanted to end his life,” he said.

“At that moment, the rest of the group rushed over to calm him down and said they would not let him die. Then we helped him sit down and talked to him. He told us that his father and grandfather were dead and he cried all the time,” Sittichart said.

He then asked the man to reconsider, saying he should give some thought as to whether he would meet his father and grandfather if he died and whether they would be happy to see him kill himself. “I told him that we were ready to help him,” he said.

He continued crying and saying he did not want help from police. The talk continued for hours until 9pm when Yannawa police went

to fetch him. Police told the students the man had already tried to commit suicide earlier that day.

The story was praised on social media, mainly due to the students’ quick intervention, without which the man would’ve died.

National police chief Pol General Chakthip Chaijinda instructed officers to probe the matter thoroughly after the deceased’s father said he suspected foul play, police spokesman Colonel Krissana Pattanacharoen said on Tuesday.

Bhumibol Hospital’s initial autopsy found no wounds on the body of Pongpet’s girlfriend, 27-year-old Suphanee Sinanantrakool, hence it was likely that she had died of smoke inhalation during the fire, Krissana said.

With her father Banyat Sinanantrakool, 61, having told police on Monday that he was doubtful about whether Suphanee’s death was an accident or a case of murder, Krissana said police investigators were as of press time still gathering evidence and interviewing witnesses while still waiting for a full and formal autopsy report, as the forensic test results should help clear all doubts.

After Kukot police received a fire report at 10.50pm on Sunday, firefighters tried for 30 minutes to put out the blaze, and later found Suphanee’s body in a bathroom on the second floor.

The fire, which apparently started in the second floor’s prayer room, damaged four rooms on the same floor.

Damage to the property is estimated as Bt1 million.

Police initially found that at the time of the blaze there were eight people in the house, including Suphanee, who was taking a bath when the fire trapped her.

Banyat told reporters on Monday that he hoped that the full autopsy result would soon clarify this, as he recalled that she had allegedly often fought with Pongphet, who he claimed to be prone to violence, which had once made him consider filing an assault complaint against the former singer.

He said the couple’s fights also sometimes led to a threat of “burning things”, and this might have been what had happened on Sunday, but had got out of hand and escalated into a house fire.

Banyat, claiming that the initial autopsy showed Suphanee had sustained seven or eight bruises, has said he will not cremate his daughter’s body until the investigation clears up any doubts over her death.

Meanwhile, Pongphet’s younger sister, Pongcomphoo, told police on Monday that she had returned home at 7pm on Sunday, to find five other people in the house – her sister, parents, uncle and aunt – but she did not at the time know that Pongphet and Suphanee were there too.

She said that she and her sister were on a Facebook Live broadcast selling goods from their second-floor bedroom at 9pm and had turned on loud music, when they later saw smoke coming into the room and came out to find the house was on fire.

She heard a woman scream “Hot!” and ran toward the sound to help her in the dark, as the fire had caused a blackout, but it was too searingly hot for her to do so, so she fled downstairs and called for help.

Pongcomphoo told police that no one at the time had known for sure whether Suphanee was in the bathroom or the bedroom at the time the blaze took hold.

She tearfully said that she was saddened about what happened and understood that Suphanee’s family may have doubts, because everyone in the house survived except for their daughter.

She said she believed the fire was an accident, as the house had already had electrical issues since the 2011 flood.

Pongphet had told her that he tried to help Suphanee three times, but the flames were too strong, Pongcomphoo added.

The doctor posted on his Facebook wall on Monday that he detected the 10th case of a delivery mother using meth in three months.

He said the mother thought using the drug would make the birthing easier.

But her child was found to weigh only 2,390 grams, much lighter than the standard weight of 3,000 grams.

Some mothers argued that they had used the drug during all of their pregnancies and their children were still born healthy, the doctor added.

The doctor said he would like government agencies to launch awareness campaigns to warn mothers of the danger from abusing meth during pregnancy.