Christmas and Geographic Information System (GIS)

According to the Biblical tales, three wise men travelled from the East to visit infant Jesus at Bethlehem. They were guided by stars.

It is common wisdom that the angle between the horizon and North Star (Polaris) defines the latitude. They would have certainly relied upon the Polaris to a great extent to reach their destination.

Will this journey qualify as one of the early examples of spaced based navigation?

Perhaps coordinate based navigation systems were well developed and widely used during those times. However, it was only during the middle of previous century that these got formally christened as Geographic Information System.   

What Ails Open Access Initiative

Professor Leslie Chan, an acknowledged champion of Open Access Initiative (OAI) was at IIITM-K on 18 December 2012.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-kerala/call-for-efforts-to-promote-open-access-platforms/article4215981.ece

The authors’ views:

OAI is perfectly fine concept. But it is inherently counter-evolutionary in nature. This, I believe is perhaps the biggest dampener for its sluggish acceptability.

If we take a look at evolution (including social), it is evident that all things regarded as resource at any point of time; gets hoarded for the benefit and development of the clan/society

Today, knowledge is a resource. It transforms itself to power, money and what not. Hence it is only logical that today the forces for collective, voluntary tendency to hoard knowledge are very strong.

Viewed from this perspective, OAI seems somewhat like asking people to hoard rocks instead of gold!

We 4 Us: Towards a cleaner, healthier Thiruvananthapuram

Dear Friend,

We are certain, you will agree that we the people of this once beautiful city, Thiruvananthapuram, are cutting the very branch on which, we are nested.

Two photos are sufficient to convey what we are indicating.

 Courtesy: sreepadmanabhan.blogspot.com/ 

 Source: http://www.hindu.com/fline/fl2922/stories/20121116292212500.htm

One of the founding believes on which the ecological informatics initiative at the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management – Kerala [IIITM-K] is built is that environmental problems are not environmental Per se . They are social.

Activity at IIITM-K is academic in nature. However, over time, we have realized that academics encompasses much more than class room constructs. Hence we are reaching out.

We 4 Us is a platform that attempts to make Thiruvananthapuram an enviably clean and pleasantly cool city. We welcome you to this non-partisan, apolitical platform.

Let us pool our ideas, resources and energy to explore, if we can use the coming months to contribute to the betterment of our beloved city. With a critical mass, we shall act.

Remember the lines   “We are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who make a brighter day ………….  .”

  

Mobile facilitated real-time harvesting of bio-physical data

Biophysical parameters drive global environmental processes. Although it is now established that human actions, have affected the rate of global processes to invariably bring-in state transitions, sooner than what would have unfolded naturally; we are uncertain about the very nature and consequences thereof. 

Our endeavors towards modeling to anticipate the nature of change, is limited by paucity of primary representative data. Today smart phone provides an exciting opportunity to plug this data gap.

We are striving to develop a system to address this primal issue. 

If you have an interest in mobile apps for environmental research, please drop a word to  ei[at]iiitmk.ac.in 

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