Changes in pollution board undermine accountability

In a surprise move, the Government of Karnataka drastically altered recently the distribution of authority within the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB), the sole environmental regulator in the state. After having appointed a new chairman a few months ago, the government has now amended the rules to give most day-to-day powers to the member-secretary

Apartments struggle with 'manage your own sewage' rule

Bengaluru's bruhath problem with sewage is notoriously well known, with pictures of foaming lakes and fish kills attracting global media attention. But what is less well known is the fact that this city has the highest number of apartment-scale sewage treatment plants (STPs) in the country

BWSSB's wrong approach

Bengaluru’s wastewater woes—stinking rivers, fish kills, and froth and fire on lake spillways—have attracted global attention. This notoriety has triggered various policy responses. Mandating large apartment and commercial buildings to treat and reuse their wastewater has been one such response. Scarcity of fresh water lends support to this idea as wastewater reuse can reduce freshwater demand as well

A low power IoT network for smart agriculture

Traditional agriculture is transforming into smart agriculture due to the prominence of the Internet of Things (IoT). Low-cost and low-power are the key factors to make any IoT network useful and acceptable to the farmers. In this paper, we have proposed a low-power, low-cost IoT network for smart agriculture. For monitoring the soil moisture content, we have used an in-house developed sensor. In the proposed network, the IITH mote is used as a sink and sensor node which provides low-power communication. We have evaluated our network with state of the art networks, proposed for agriculture monitoring. Power and cost are the two metrics used for evaluation of these networks. Results show that the proposed network consumes less power and has prolonged lifetime in the agriculture field

Jamming the Classroom

Drawing on a mix of collaborative autoethnography, secondary literature, interviews with leading improvisers, and personal anecdotal material, Jamming the Classroom discusses the pedagogy of musical improvisation as a vehicle for teaching, learning, and enacting social justice. Heble and Stewart write that to “jam the classroom” is to argue for a renewed understanding of improvisation as both a musical and a social practice; to activate the knowledge and resources associated with improvisational practices in an expression of noncompliance with dominant orders of knowledge production; and to recognize in the musical practices of aggrieved communities something far from the reaches of conventional forms of institutionalized power, yet something equally powerful, urgent, and expansive. With this definition of jamming the classroom in mind, Heble and Stewart argue that even as improvisation gains recognition within mainstream institutions (including classrooms in universities), it needs to be understood as a critique of dominant institutionalized assumptions and epistemic orders. Suggesting a closer consideration of why musical improvisation has been largely expunged from dominant models of pedagogical inquiry in both classrooms and communities, this book asks what it means to theorize the pedagogy of improvised music in relation to public programs of action, debate, and critical practice

ICASP partnerships: Building a collaborative project

This was part of the Partnership Practices: Working with community, industry and university event, held on March 1, 2011. This collection of 52 posters was presented at the Partnership Practices: Working with Community, Industry and Government event. This event was designed to highlight community-university partnerships for research and other purposes from across the university and community at a one-day event held at the Quebec Street Mall in the City of Guelph, Ontario. These posters were in response to a Call for Posters. The selection was made by the Steering Committee Members: Linda Hawkins, Director, Institute for Community Engaged Scholarship; Erin Skimson, Director, Business Development Office, Office of Research; Sue Bennett, Director, University and Community Relations, Office of the President; Melanie Lang, Director, CBASE, College of Management and Economics; Bronwynn Wilton, Industry Outreach Knowledge Mobilization Manager, Office of Research, Agri-Food Partnerships; Shawna Reibling, Knowledge Mobilization Coordinator, Institute for Community Engaged Scholarship; Jennifer Peleschak, Manager of Programs and Events, College of Management and Economics; and Mary Magyar, Events Assistant, Institute for Community Engaged Scholarship.Based out of the University of Guelph and directed by Dr. Ajay Heble, the Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice (ICASP) research project explores musical improvisation as a model for social change. The ICASP project is a collaborative research initiative that works with many community-based organizations on research activities, project outcomes, and dissemination of research results. This poster profiles and discusses the unique features of each of the project partners

Internet of Things based Wireless Plant Sensor for Smart Farming

About 10% of the world’s workforce is directly dependent on agriculture for income and about 99% of food consumed by humans comes from farming. Agriculture is highly climate dependent and with global warming and rapidly changing weather it has become necessary to closely monitor the environment of growing crops for maximizing output as well as increasing food security while minimizing resource usage. In this study, we developed a low cost system which will monitor the temperature, humidity, light intensity and soil moisture of crops and send it to an online server for storage and analysis, based on this data the system can control actuators to control the growth parameters. The three tier system architecture consists of sensors and actuators on the lower level followed by an 8-bit AVR microcontroller which is used for data acquisition and processing topped by an ESP8266 Wi-Fi module which communicates with the internet server. The system uses relay to control actuators such as pumps to irrigate the fields; online weather data is used to optimize the irrigation cycles. The prototyped system was subject to several tests, the experimental results express the systems reliability and accuracy which accentuate its feasibility in real-world applications

Kinetics of the reaction between benzyl chloride and formic acid

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