Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Sustainable swimming beaches in Chennai
Chennai has a large coastline. However, there are hardly any clean and safe swimming beaches. This is largely due to fishing settlements in many inner city beaches. The fishermen do not have access to clean toilets. So, they use the sea as a toilet. This is especially common at dawn, when one would ideally like to go for a swim before it gets too hot.
Another problem caused by the fishing settlements is the inability to build coastal roads through these settlements, leading to congestion in narrow lanes forced to become arterial roads (e.g. Anna Street connecting Kalakshetra colony and Marundeeshwarar temple).
However, the fishing settlement can be empowered with a tremendous resource right at their doorstep. Waves. Small scale offshore wave energy turbines can be installed in each such settlement. A fraction of the energy generated can be used to power low cost housing for these settlements. The rest can be traded in the energy market. The proceeds can go towards funding low cost housing, and a sanitation system, followed by beach beautification.
So that the fishermen can remain economically independent, we need an NGO to fund the setting up of wave turbines, which the settlement can own or part-own with an energy company.
A derivative product can be structured around the risks (the energy company giving the knowhow and equipment for wave turbines needs high waves, the fishermen need low waves).
If this can be piloted in a handful of beach-kuppams in Chennai, over time the beach can become clean. Beautification projects can be started, and people can feel safe to go for a swim without fear of diarrhoea.
Obviously my suggestion is very lazy and naive. It does not take into account the cost of setting up wave turbines, their energy output efficiency, the ability to integrate the generated energy into the local grid and how the energy market works. Oracles, please help me work out the details in the comments section.
For more info:
http://indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/content/ocean-wave-power-generation-concept-trial-orissa-and-other-coastal-states
http://www.thehindu.com/2009/06/05/stories/2009060558970400.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chennai_Elevated_Expressways
Another problem caused by the fishing settlements is the inability to build coastal roads through these settlements, leading to congestion in narrow lanes forced to become arterial roads (e.g. Anna Street connecting Kalakshetra colony and Marundeeshwarar temple).
However, the fishing settlement can be empowered with a tremendous resource right at their doorstep. Waves. Small scale offshore wave energy turbines can be installed in each such settlement. A fraction of the energy generated can be used to power low cost housing for these settlements. The rest can be traded in the energy market. The proceeds can go towards funding low cost housing, and a sanitation system, followed by beach beautification.
So that the fishermen can remain economically independent, we need an NGO to fund the setting up of wave turbines, which the settlement can own or part-own with an energy company.
A derivative product can be structured around the risks (the energy company giving the knowhow and equipment for wave turbines needs high waves, the fishermen need low waves).
If this can be piloted in a handful of beach-kuppams in Chennai, over time the beach can become clean. Beautification projects can be started, and people can feel safe to go for a swim without fear of diarrhoea.
Obviously my suggestion is very lazy and naive. It does not take into account the cost of setting up wave turbines, their energy output efficiency, the ability to integrate the generated energy into the local grid and how the energy market works. Oracles, please help me work out the details in the comments section.
For more info:
http://indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/content/ocean-wave-power-generation-concept-trial-orissa-and-other-coastal-states
http://www.thehindu.com/2009/06/05/stories/2009060558970400.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chennai_Elevated_Expressways
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Instantaneous and lagged seasons
Helsinki is certainly a four-season city. I have often been asked which is the best season to visit. To this question, I often give monosyllabic answers after considering and discarding some very long and unsatisfactory answers.
It struck me that of the four, perhaps the season that is experienced with least immediacy is spring. Whereas summer, fall and winter can be experienced with great immediacy, the experience of spring critically depends on the winter that is ending (the input or the moving-average component) and its experience (the state or the auto-regressive component).
So, I would call spring a causal, auto-regressive moving-average season, a lagged season and rank it as the least interesting when experienced instantaneously.
It struck me that of the four, perhaps the season that is experienced with least immediacy is spring. Whereas summer, fall and winter can be experienced with great immediacy, the experience of spring critically depends on the winter that is ending (the input or the moving-average component) and its experience (the state or the auto-regressive component).
So, I would call spring a causal, auto-regressive moving-average season, a lagged season and rank it as the least interesting when experienced instantaneously.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
On neologisms
While coining a neologism, especially in science, but also generally, here is a checklist that one could adhere to:
1. It should sound less jargon-like than the jargons it is composed of: "Jargon added is jargon halved" effect.
2. It should be fresh, but not just frivolous and as far as possible, intuituve.
3. Once defined, it should have a greater sense of immediacy, and home-in on the concept faster than the definition itself. In that sense it should be focused. However, it should be more than focused in the following way. The definition should remain fresh, such that on re-reading the definition, and definitions of terms used in the definition (recursively), it should evoke a richer, diverse cloud of related ideas and thus contextually situate the neologism.
4. It should have a quality of being used by the 'in-crowd', in a manner that the anxious 'out-crowd' wants to understand what it means and start using it in sentences.
1. It should sound less jargon-like than the jargons it is composed of: "Jargon added is jargon halved" effect.
2. It should be fresh, but not just frivolous and as far as possible, intuituve.
3. Once defined, it should have a greater sense of immediacy, and home-in on the concept faster than the definition itself. In that sense it should be focused. However, it should be more than focused in the following way. The definition should remain fresh, such that on re-reading the definition, and definitions of terms used in the definition (recursively), it should evoke a richer, diverse cloud of related ideas and thus contextually situate the neologism.
4. It should have a quality of being used by the 'in-crowd', in a manner that the anxious 'out-crowd' wants to understand what it means and start using it in sentences.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Building on the brain
I came across this piece in the latest issue of Neuron.
John P Eberhard. 2009. Applying Neuroscience to Architecture. Neuron 62:753-756.
Basically, it is a promo piece for the author's latest book Brain Landscape, which advocates architects to apply findings of brain imaging to their design of schools, hospitals, public spaces, old age homes and memorials. Eberhard is the founding President of the non-profit Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, established in 2003. You get the picture.
Why have ideas such as these and other low-hanging fruit (neuroeconomics, neurocinematics) become so popular these days, without anybody bothering to address how neuroscientific knowledge (such as: the prefrontal cortex is involved in decision making) is not completely superfluous to knowledge from conventional psychology and the behavioral sciences (such as: natural light improves class grades) as far as application domains (such as architecture) are concerned? Note that I do not dispute the fact that such neuro-marriages may be intellectually stimulating.
The saving grace is that it wasn't called neuroarchitecture (not to be confused with neuroarchitectonics: the beautiful and painstaking characterization of brain anatomy in terms of cell types, synapse densities, tissue properties, relative thickness of cortical layers, vasculature etc. etc. which early 20th century greats like Cajal and Brodmann pioneered).
I'm not arguing for traditionalism, I'm not arguing for scientists to be conservative with their imagination. On that contrary, I am disappointed that out-of-the-box thinking falls so dreadfully short of the mark. Why can't we be more original? It is not as though fresh insight and imagination cannot be applied to traditional stuff of the brain such as anatomy, hemodynamics, connectivity, learning, memory etc.
What next? Neuromusicology, neuromarketing, neuropublishing, neurojournalism, neurolaw, neuro-neuroscience? Up for grabs. Quick, before somebody else.
John P Eberhard. 2009. Applying Neuroscience to Architecture. Neuron 62:753-756.
Basically, it is a promo piece for the author's latest book Brain Landscape, which advocates architects to apply findings of brain imaging to their design of schools, hospitals, public spaces, old age homes and memorials. Eberhard is the founding President of the non-profit Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, established in 2003. You get the picture.
Why have ideas such as these and other low-hanging fruit (neuroeconomics, neurocinematics) become so popular these days, without anybody bothering to address how neuroscientific knowledge (such as: the prefrontal cortex is involved in decision making) is not completely superfluous to knowledge from conventional psychology and the behavioral sciences (such as: natural light improves class grades) as far as application domains (such as architecture) are concerned? Note that I do not dispute the fact that such neuro-marriages may be intellectually stimulating.
The saving grace is that it wasn't called neuroarchitecture (not to be confused with neuroarchitectonics: the beautiful and painstaking characterization of brain anatomy in terms of cell types, synapse densities, tissue properties, relative thickness of cortical layers, vasculature etc. etc. which early 20th century greats like Cajal and Brodmann pioneered).
I'm not arguing for traditionalism, I'm not arguing for scientists to be conservative with their imagination. On that contrary, I am disappointed that out-of-the-box thinking falls so dreadfully short of the mark. Why can't we be more original? It is not as though fresh insight and imagination cannot be applied to traditional stuff of the brain such as anatomy, hemodynamics, connectivity, learning, memory etc.
What next? Neuromusicology, neuromarketing, neuropublishing, neurojournalism, neurolaw, neuro-neuroscience? Up for grabs. Quick, before somebody else.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Soul aether poetry
In earnestly overdesigned, Randian, dystopic cities, ego depletes and the soul bleeds aether, one Merchant-of-Venetian fleshpound at a time. A giant gascloud of fecundity rarefies, almost imperceptibly, and the very creatability of comparative-comparative-history, that great recursive weapon of ideological warfare, set to take root in c. 3500 CE, stands threatened.
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