Speech & Debate

American teenagers lack character building blocks in their adolescence.https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/educ_sys_202/1017/thumbnail.jp

Can Cosmic Structure form without Dark Matter?

One of the prime pieces of evidence for dark matter is the observation of large overdense regions in the universe. Since we know from the cosmic microwave background that the regions that contained the most baryons when the universe was ~400,000 years old were overdense by only one part in ten thousand, perturbations had to have grown since then by a factor greater than $(1+z_*)\simeq 1180$ where $z_*$ is the epoch of recombination. This enhanced growth does not happen in general relativity, so dark matter is needed in the standard theory. We show here that enhanced growth can occur in alternatives to general relativity, in particular in Bekenstein's relativistic version of MOdified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). The vector field introduced in that theory for a completely different reason plays a key role in generating the instability that produces large cosmic structures today.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Natural Radiation Induced Developmental Disability: An Avian Model

Radiation exposure during gestation causes mutation in the fetus leading to birth defects in the newborn. On a survey of the coastal villages of Kanyakumari District, Tamilnadu, India, high levels of background radiation were detected, which was suggestive of inducing mutations, and congenital abnormalities in the exposed population. To substantiate the dangerous impact of such natural radioactive emissions, we have established an avian model of irradiation-induced birth defect in chicks hatched from eggs exposed to natural radioactive beach sand. The hatched experimental chicks exhibited severe locomotor disability and extreme malformations. Our study proves for the first time, that natural beach sand radiation induces severe developmental abnormalities. The results of this experiment brings to light, the importance of radiation-protection during gestation and also the need for monitoring and cleaning of radioactive sand deposits in beaches all over the world

Junior Recital

List of performers and performances

Using the High Productivity Language Chapel to Target GPGPU Architectures

It has been widely shown that GPGPU architectures offer large performance gains compared to their traditional CPU counterparts for many applications. The downside to these architectures is that the current programming models present numerous challenges to the programmer: lower-level languages, explicit data movement, loss of portability, and challenges in performance optimization. In this paper, we present novel methods and compiler transformations that increase productivity by enabling users to easily program GPGPU architectures using the high productivity programming language Chapel. Rather than resorting to different parallel libraries or annotations for a given parallel platform, we leverage a language that has been designed from first principles to address the challenge of programming for parallelism and locality. This also has the advantage of being portable across distinct classes of parallel architectures, including desktop multicores, distributed memory clusters, large-scale shared memory, and now CPU-GPU hybrids. We present experimental results from the Parboil benchmark suite which demonstrate that codes written in Chapel achieve performance comparable to the original versions implemented in CUDA.NSF CCF 0702260Cray Inc. Cray-SRA-2010-016962010-2011 Nvidia Research Fellowshipunpublishednot peer reviewe

GIS applications in aquatic environment

Globally, on an average, GIS tools save billions of dollars annually in the delivery of goods and services through proper route planning. GIS regularly help in the day-to-day management of many natural and man-made resources, including sewer, water, power, and transportation networks. Applications of GIS in marine and coastal ecosystem study is an emerging field today. GIS help us identify and address environmental problems by providing crucial information on where problems occur and who are affected by them. It also helps us identify the source, location and extent of adverse environmental impacts. GIS enable us to devise practical plans for monitoring, managing, and mitigating environmental damage. Human impacts on the environment, conflicts in resource use, concerns about pollution, and precautions to protect public health have spurred a strong societal push for the adoption of GIS

Utilizing GIS tools for ecosystem related mapping

Geographic information system (GIS) is a tool for making and using spatial information and it is mainly concerned with location of the features as well as properties/attributes of those features. It helps us gather, analyse and visualize spatial data for different purposes. A GIS quantifies the locations of features by recording their coordinates which are the numbers that describe the position of these features on Earth. The uniqueness of GIS is its ability to do spatial analysis. GIS helps us analyse the spatial relationships and interactions. Sometimes, GIS proves to be the only way to solve spatially-related problems and it is one of the most important tools that aid in decision making process. GIS basically helps to answer three questions; How much of what is where? What is the shape and extent of it? Has it changed over time

Applications of Geoinformatics in Fisheries and Natural Resource Management

Geoinformatics is the art, science or technology dealing with the acquisition, storage, processing production, presentation and dissemination of spatial data or the geoinformation. Geoinformatics has been extensively used in almost all the fields of study, be it natural sciences, social sciences, archaeology, surveying, marketing etc. and you name any field of study for that matter. It shows the importance of Geoinformatics in the present world. Geographic information system (GIS) is the platform on which spatial data is collected, stored, analysed and the information is extracted. The strength of GIS is its ability to integrate data from different sources and carryout spatial analysis to arrive at meaningful conclusions which otherwise would not be possible

Life Beyond Barriers

Life won’t always go as the way you want and due to the same reason, a few people succeed in life, while others not. It is very interesting to see how successful people tackle the problems of their life. When the lazy people find unconquerable barriers in life, successful people find it as challenges which could be overcome through diligent planning and confidence. This training session is intended to give the ‘Theeranaipunya - Equipping Fisherwomen Youth for Future’ trainees a few tips on how to manage a successful life