Associating Belief systems and cultural practices to Academics

From childhood some common rituals, practices, beliefs are hard wired into our brains. Some of these practices are beyond the proof of science. Even those with extra ordinary capabilities in science and technology follow certain ceremonies that are still beyond the reach of human cognition. One such phenomenon is seeking blessings from God before a launch of satellite or starting a major and complex projects spanning across the globe.

When we are suffering we look for solace in practices that cannot be proven by science and we take great pains to seek the blessings or visit far off crowded religious places to just get the blessings we need. Come Rain or Shine we are so determined to follow the rituals.

When we look this from a scientific angle we see the best human characters such as determination, focus, will to overcome obstacles, patience and all those best practices that can make anyone highly successful if same are followed in academics or career.

A major effort is going on in reforming education system across the globe. To name a few prominent personalities in educational reform are Bill gates  https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2010/04/12-Foundations-Commit-to-Education-Innovation-with-US-Department-of-Education

, Khan academy https://www.khanacademy.org/  , Facebook Zuckerberg https://chanzuckerberg.com/ ,  Indian Government sponsored national skills development programs  http://nsfindia.org/,  Massive Online Open courseware (MOOC) programs  and the list goes on.  If we search online we can find organizations, corporate houses, foundations all working to reform education system.

I felt everyone is missing the last mile effort in their Noble intentions of reaching out to every kid on the planet. That is creating curiosity, love, blind faith, solace and all those characteristics that I described above which we follow without questioning when it comes to religion, culture, heritage and whatnot other than scientifically proven methods.

What I wish to bring to attention to all those great pioneers of educational reforms is to align their process, practices and subject matter to bring the same extra ordinary characteristics we show when it comes to all the practices I mentioned above into academics and corporate best practices.

A great research is needed on deeper understanding of how even a very common person exhibits extra ordinary human characters when it comes to religious practices, cultural and belief systems. That insights should then be ingrained in to our educational practices.

Also I think by aligning our education system, syllabus, skill enhancement programs to spirituality and to harmonious living with nature, will bring extra ordinary success not just in making our children the best but also saving our planet from disintegration because of our behaviour and practices till date that will lead us just to destruction.

It is time that we align our Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education more in tune to Nature’s way of handling the Planet’s resources. Our living standards should not be measured by materialistic gadgets we have but how well we are integrated with the nature around us and how well our gadgets are aligned to nature.

What do you think?  Complement and enrich this thought process with your comments and suggestions please.

Indian University rankings

The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) outlines a methodology to rank institutions across the country. The methodology draws from the overall recommendations broad understanding arrived at by a Core Committee set up by MHRD, to identify the broad parameters for ranking various universities and institutions. The parameters broadly cover “Teaching, Learning and Resources,” “Research and Professional Practices,” “Graduation Outcomes,” “Outreach and Inclusivity,” and “Perception”.

India Rankings – 2016 based on this framework were released on 4th April 2016.

Know more here.

https://www.nirfindia.org/univ

Universities that did not register can do it now by clicking the below link

http://nirfweb.cloudapp.net/Registrationnew.aspx

To know more about my professional work   click here http://skillsnest.com/

Some interesting and useful tidbits for starting your own “startup ” or for your academic project submission

This blog post will be updated with commercial worthy Project ideas for those entrepreneurs and Engineering, Medical students who wish to develop localized solutions that might lead them to start their own company or develop real products as part of their Project work.

Medical technology offers immense potential for new business ideas and I will put some cutting edge information of what’s going on in that field. 

The  innovations of the world can be put to good cause of the society’s needs in Asian countries by localizing and cross implementing the ideas or generating new ones with the gained knowledge.

Cross pollinate the ideas that are presented here with your knowledge and skills and come up with something that can benefit the society in general.

You may use the comment section for floating your ideas to get feedback from international audience who read my blog.

Here is the steps to follow. Read this innovations. Think of how you can localize this ideas for commercial purpose or for your academic real project and work with your friends or teams that post their comments for this blog.

1. Carnegie Mellon’s Future Interfaces Group has developed a smart watch that had four micro lasers that are capable of emitting simple icon shapes. These icons can be home button for navigation, to play or pause controls for music, to push notifications for email, to rudimentary up and down arrows. At the same time, infrared sensors watch for when your finger taps a button, effectively turning your skin into a touch-screen display.  The link for more information on this is here http://www.figlab.com/

There are several interesting Projects at Fiblab  so go and check them out for details.

2. During a Doctor’s visit for symptoms like cough and cold we are prescribed antibiotics which do not have much effect in curing the illness but this antibiotics act as a Placebo  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo and by taking Antibiotics and other Medicines indiscriminately (prescribed by Doctors) we also end up developing resistance to diseases and next time that drug does not work on our bodies. So a group of physicians have come up with a number to find out how many times a drug will have good effect on a particular disease and this Number will help us or Doctors to decide whether to prescribe that drug to patient or not. Get more details on this here and pass on this information to Doctors so that they will prescribe the Drugs that are absolutely necessary for our treatments.  http://www.thennt.com/

Also those interested in learning more about high quality health information there is a great website. Here is the details of that site “The Cochrane Library is a collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making, and a seventh database that provides information about groups in The Cochrane Collaboration.”    http://www.thecochranelibrary.com/view/0/index.html

3. Gesture controlling technologies. Smartphones have multiple antennas that can take signals from our gestures. You can learn more about their uses and present state of what is getting developed here but there is no limit to imagination and I wish to see that this technologies are tapped  to come up with products that can be useful in operation theaters for doctors and in other industrial applications. Learn the present here and come up with your own project.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinect   2. http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/09/19/reflected-smartphone-transmissions-enable-gesture-control/   3. http://blog.leapmotion.com/

4.Smart connected Products (Internet of things). This is the next wave of big opportunity for creating new solutions, products by smartly leveraging the information of the products, sensors and other industrial equipment communicating via Internet. (Internet of things). In order to know what products, sensors and services are connected there is a search engine just like google  for that. Here is the link. https://thingful.net/  “is a search engine for the Internet of Things, providing a unique geographical index of connected objects around the world, including energy, radiation, weather, and air quality devices as well as seismographs, iBeacons, ships, aircraft and even animal trackers.”. Using this a company has created a product that helps asthma patients to identify which part of the US cities are causing asthma to them..Learn more here http://propellerhealth.com/   so why wait go ahead and think what else can be done.

5. Big data company Ayasdi is working with several Universities, companies to solve the problems of Brain and uncurable diseases such as Diabetes. Regarding type 2 Diabetes in their own words

“With Ayasdi Cure, Mount Sinai was able to gain new breakthrough insights that can dramatically impact how Type 2 Diabetes patients are diagnosed and treated. Based on the shape of the data, Mt. Sinai discovered that Type 2 Diabetes is not a singular disease. This breakthrough in Precision Medicine can lead to more effective treatment protocols and better patient outcomes for all Type 2 Diabetes patients.”  More here

http://www.ayasdi.com/company/media/pr-ayasdi-named-best-of-show-and-best-practices-winner.html

Come back to this blog for more such interesting posts in coming days

Business Ideas. Develop apps without knowing software code.

Ideas for would be entrepreneurs

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/twine-listen-to-your-world-talk-to-the-internet

http://www.sparkdevices.com/demo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=B9qCLs8txBo

Clean water for cheap: Lukas jager developed  a bowl that can be used for purifying water.  The bowls are made of a clay and sawdust mix that is fired at 850 degrees Celsius. The sawdust burns away during firing leaving behind pores in the clay that make it ideal for purifying liquids at a fast rate. By adding colloidal silver, remaining traces of bacteria are killed, extending the shelf life of the final product. look for pictures here http://www.lukasjager.nl/waterschap.html

How to hide your emails from tracking

How To Hide Your Email: What Petraeus Did & What He Should Have Done

New ideas for a start up business in Philanthropic area

A organization called “Catchafire” http://www.catchafire.org/ creates new opportunities for talent based generosity. The website allows accomplished professionals with variety of skills who are looking for ways to put those same skills to good use for non-profits, social enterprises and NGO’s (it’s a kind of skills based philanthropy) join them . Catchafire will match the skills with non-profit projects based upon your skills and interests. The projects these professionals work are of high impact and high value for the society, spanning from few hours to many months.  Check out and see how your skills will be of good use for the betterment of the planet’s living beings at the site.

Nature”s article on generosity http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7416/full/nature11467.html

http://generosityresearch.nd.edu/

Some links to those who are already working in this area are as follows

http://www.akshayapatra.org/

http://www.globalgiving.org/

http://www.pencilsofpromise.org/

http://www.nextbillion.net/blog

http://www.changemakers.com/sustainableurbanhousing

http://www.pih.org/

http://poptech.org/about

http://www.one.org/c/international/issue/3803/

http://www.globalpovertyproject.com/

http://www.akdn.org/akf

http://everymothercounts.org/

http://www.charitywater.org/

http://www.crowdrise.com/

http://hopemob.org/

http://invisiblepeople.tv/blog/

Develop Apps without knowing code

http://www.theappbuilder.com/

http://ifttt.com/wtf

Using Whale example to explore deep in the ocean.

http://poptech.org/popcasts/kelly_benoitbird_marine_acoustics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_echosounder

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110316153133.htm

Watch movies free, PDF document converter, Free Web tools for daily use, solve puzzles for science

Want to watch Hollywood movies streamed only in US from anywhere? Go to http://mediahint.com/ and click start Using button. It will download a crx extention file that  you can drag to your browser as suggested by them. In Chrome you should go to settings, extensions and drag the downloaded file. Now you can open http://www.hulu.com/ and watch free TV and movies online.

Want to convert  your mobile email attachment files or PDF  or some other format  files to any other formats ? You can use the following services free

http://www.zamzar.com/conversionTypes.php  Conversion steps are given here http://www.zamzar.com/

Another PDF converter to word, excel, html without loosing the layout properties is http://www.abbyy.com/pdftransformer/

If someone sent you a Chinese or other languages  PDF file you can translate that to English.  Upload your foreign version file to Google translate and let it translate the stuff for you. Here is the link  http://translate.google.com/?tr=f&hl=en and for editing  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7W2NJFdoIg

If you got a foreign language email you can install the Microsoft utility to translate the langauge without leaving your outlook email. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5780

You can also use http://www.onlinedoctranslator.com/translator for translating any document and this will also preserve the original layout and formats

Want to save your favorite webpages as PDF files?  Use this free service http://joliprint.com/

If you want to edit text from a PDF Image file you can use Google OCR. Log In to your Gmail account, upload the image to Google docs (check the box “convert text to google format”)  and it will convert the image to text that you can edit later.

Other services available are http://www.onlineocr.net/  http://finereader.abbyyonline.com/en/Account/Welcome  http://ocronline.com/

Have a password protected PDF file ? Use this software to unlock the service http://www.pdfunlock.com/

Web tool to create easily ipad apps

http://scriptk.it/ allows you to drag and drop snippets of code to create your own app very fast.

Got ideas in your head. Better put them somewhere before you loose them. Use the following websites that help you in storing your tasks and ideas http://www.wunderlist.com/ 

http://evernote.com/ and http://springpad.com/about allows you to store your ideas/ tasks visually.

some more good sites to consider are https://trello.com/

http://asana.com/

http://www.resoph.com/ResophNotes/Welcome.html

Anyone can solve puzzles that scientists cannot. Check details here  http://fold.it/portal/

A website called patients like me allows you to check treatments, symptoms and other great information online from fellow humans who suffer the same disease  This openness enables everyone to quickly learn about health related information without costing anything to them. Check details here  http://www.patientslikeme.com/treatments

Pure water from salt water the cheaper way. Refrigerated by sunlight

Here is a a sustainable and useful idea for those living near the sea to use ocean water to get pure water. A clever design by Gabriel Diamanti gives 5 liters of fresh water from salt water. The method is very simple. He built a clay pot, a solar plate to heat and vaporize the salt water for desalination (vaporizing  salt water) , a metal base and collecting vessel.  Sun heats the salt water and condensation takes place. The water vapor is then collected at the bottom where it is cooler than on the top. This water is pure water and drinkable. Salt and other waste is cleaned out from the top for reuse of the same for more water.  Five Liters of  water can be collected on a good sunlight day. This idea should be made popular in our country since it is very cheap and effective way of collecting pure water in small scale by villagers. The following links gives you the pictures and the idea of how to build one for yourselves.

http://www.gabrielediamanti.com/projects/eliodomestico

http://www.core77designawards.com/2012/recipients/eliodomestico/

For more water related resources check the below websites.

http://water.org/water-crisis/water-facts/water/

http://water.org/news/resources/

For those students who want to do live projects the below resources gives you more ideas. Check them

http://www.gabrielediamanti.com/

http://jap.hu/electronic/

http://www.ifixit.com/

http://www.semiconductor-today.com/news_items/2012/SEP/NTNU_170912.html

http://www.ideo.com/work/#work_categories

http://www.new-startups.com/electronics/

http://iprojectideas.blogspot.in/2009/09/civil-engineering-project-ideas.html

http://www.diynetwork.com/

http://www.codeforge.com/s/0/software-mini-projects

http://www.lce.com/Mechanical_Engineering_Project_Examples_327.html

Refrigeration by sunlight

Science  daily carries a article on how sun’s rays are used for cooling food that is kept in a fridge. The process involves heating water to 200 degrees F and then uses the heat to drive a compressor that lowers the temperature of a refrigerant in the fridge. With very hot climate in India I think this is a good solution of keeping farmers vegetable and fruit crops fresh until they are sold in the market. This method is environment friendly, reduces the usage of electricity to minimum.

I’m hoping that somebody takes this idea to implementation stage. The details about this process can be read at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100503111531.htm

The MEDISCO project (Mediterranean food and agriculture industry applications of solar cooling technologies) has built several of these solar refrigeration plants in Mediterranean countries where sunshine is plenty.  Engineers are using concentrating collectors to direct the sunlight onto an absorber that heats water. check more details at http://www.medisco.org/about/

Actors , actress and celebrities try living as poor. Google to count Fish and water business.

Charity news

“SHE ” is the first  a charity that raises fund to educate girl students in developing world. http://www.shesthefirst.org/

Do something is a effort that gathers  students to help others.  Check more details here http://www.dosomething.org/

A innovative projects called “Live below the line’  https://www.livebelowtheline.com/  asks celebrities to live below poverty line life style for a budget of $1.50. It already attracted 25 000 people to experience poverty real time. The money raised by this effort will go for funding charities focused on hunger and the developing world, http://www.unicef.org/ and malaria no more http://www.malarianomore.org/

Fish news

Fisherman and Fish farmers harvest more fish than what nature can withstand. By fishing too much the eco balance of the ocean is disturbed. In order to know where fishing is done too much or too little researchers have come up with the idea of using Google earth as a tool to know how much fishing has being done. A report    http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0030546   says that  “Examining the coastline of 16 Mediterranean countries for signs of the cages in which fish farmers raise their herds, the researchers estimated the 2006 production at 225,736 tons, a shade more (but not a statistically relevant amount more) than the 199,542 tons reported to the FAO by fishermen.  More than 90% of the coastline was well documented in Google’s map database, and the UN publishes extensive statistics on the ocean cage fish industry. That made accounting for the sector relatively straightforward compared to attempts at estimating fishing production for commercial, high-seas fisheries in intentional waters or subsistence fisheries.” http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-501369_162-20117650.htm

The use of Google earth is particularly very useful because the days of expensive use of satellite images are not required any more. Hope our state and central  government agencies  are smart enough to use Google earth images for various programs they conduct for agriculture, fishing and mapping towns and cities and other social needs.

Water Initiative:

Fresh water is a scarce resource and is estimated to be a $1 trillion business by 2020. check more here http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/scarcity.shtml Most of the clean Water that comes thru municipal pipes get’s wasted in flushing toilets or cleaning clothes or for many other household chores. Very little amount of clean water goes for drinking. This is a huge waste of money maintaining clean water all thru the pipelines which sometimes break and contaminate the clean water and thus causing more damage to health of the people who drink it. It requires large amounts of money to run a company to clean water and send it thru pipelines. This is again waste of money when very little amount of water is used for drinking.

A investment strategist Kevin McGovern found this problem as an opportunity to bring  together materials science researchers and water experts from around the world to create  water filters that remove the biggest health threats (such as pathogens, arsenic, fluoride, and other chemicals). They came up with a  water cooler that  can be hooked up to a  kitchen tap or other supply pipe to provide quality water when and where it’s needed. With this he was able to eliminate the expensive process of cleaning the water and sending it thru pipelines and only 2% is drinkable at the end. The group has successfully installed water coolers all over Mexico and even the government of Mexico  offices are all having one in their offices. In India and other Asian countries this is a big opportunity if some one can come up with the similar kind of idea or join forces with him to bring that technology to India. http://thewaterinitiative.com/

Man made Photosynthesis:  In Another news by Nature Royal Institute of technology scientists have come very close to mimic plant’s photosynthesis process by creating a catalyst that can break water molecules (H2o) to Hydrogen and Oxygen . Read more here http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/v4/n5/full/nchem.1301.html

http://www.kth.se/en

Talent cannot be hidden

I was reading a telugu news paper and came across an article mentioning about Geetham students going to NASA to  build a device to mine special materials from Moon surface. I felt very happy and pleased to know that in the world of Facebook, twitter , movie culture there are students who are working towards reaching outstanding goals in their life and in turn raising the nations talent levels. MY best wishes will always be with them. I know we have many hidden gems in our student community with brilliant ideas. In the form of supporting them  i strive to bring some of the best from across the world to enrich students thru this blogs’. This blog is to let you all know that Intel conducts  science talent every year. I’m pleased to say that the first prize this time went to 17 year old Nitin Tumma for doing research on breast cancer. Here  is the link

http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2012/03/13/teenager-unlocks-potential-pathways-for-breast-cancer-treatments-wins-intel-science-talent-search

“Intel is committed to supporting math and science innovation across all levels of education. The Intel Science Talent Search is just one example of Intel’s support of education at the high school level” More here  http://www.societyforscience.org/

Many Indian students achieve first positions in several competitions ranging from science , maths to spelling bee across the globe. we have students from rural villages in India  with hardly any support or infrastructure becoming IAS officers to holding top ranking positions.  Hard work, focus and sincere efforts to master the subject will always make you achieve great . If you are reading this Hope will be getting inspiration from this success stories and you will reach greater heights too. Let’s build this nation to be top destination of the world.

“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success” -Henry Ford.

Some websites that help in supporting rural innovations are here http://www.nif.org.in/

http://www.hotteststartups.in/

http://www.deshpandefoundation.org/