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Knowledge Management idea awaits Kalam

Former President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who has shown an exemplary model of returning to his passionate academic profession on the very day of retiring from the nation's highest post, will soon receive a note on a thoroughly innovative scientific concept. Dr. Kalam's glorious image also owes to his persistent desire to use the science and technology for the benefit of the deprived lots of villages, chiefly the peasants.
The outcome of a dialogue held at the Environmental Sciences Department (ESD) of University of Kerala on Knowledge Management, a groundbreaking idea towards natural resources management, will be forwarded to Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. The meeting held on 23rd July on the adoptability of the new idea, 'Knowledge Management' (KM) for natural resources management was well attended by eminent academicians, researchers and students of the ESD. The idea envisages finding, selecting, sorting and using of information for solving problems pertaining to natural resources management of different localities.
KM is supposed to usher in a new era of using IT, the so called elite's privilege, for the benefit of the natural resources management through the rural stretches. To Dr. Kalam, who has etched a glorious episode of being the people's President, the idea of KM has every reason to be a matter of delight.
Once launched, KM will be of great use in enhancing the effectiveness of ongoing popular projects including Rural Watershed Management, Integrated Rural Development, and Eco-friendly agricultural system.
Chief architects of this groundbreaking model are Head, ESD, Dr. V. Sobha, Professor of the Indian Institute of Information Technology Kerala (IIITK), Dr. C.S.P. Iyer and Assistant Professor of IIITK, Dr. R. Jaysankar. During the classroom meeting, Director of IIITK, Dr. K.R. Srivatsan gave an overview on the new Knowledge Management.

Apathetic men and gracious trees...

After reading our post Mango now a green tale, a reader was kind enough to comment the following. Between the poles, the apathy towards trees has got a strong grip, the comment hints.

I can't believe that anyone who had a place to plant a mango would choose to do without it! In the north-central regions of North America, we import mangos from all over the world - they are not part of our traditional culture, but we have been fortunate to have immigrants bring us these fruits - the first time I saw a mango tree I had traveled for a day to Costa Rica - they lie on the ground like apples and plums do, here in Minnesota.

Here, we have a problem with people cutting down and burning orchards of apples and plums, peaches and pears -- for huge poorly build but expensive houses, for golf courses, for parking lots, for no reason other than they do not know how to care for the tree or how to hire someone who knows. Instead, we plant ornamental trees that are not well-suited to this climate.It seems that false sophistication and plain ignorance are not the sole property of any one culture or locale.

Tell your children to plant a mango tree - because some child in North America would give an apple to be able to have all the mangos she wanted.... - Elizabth

Aquatic insects are pointers to pollutants

Prof. Dr. John C. Morse talking with the Prof. and Head, Dr. V. Sobha (right) and other faculty members of the Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Kerala.

Prof. Dr. John C. Morse, Department of Entomology, Soil and Plant Sciences, Clemson University, South Carolina, U.S.A. recently visited the Department of Environmental Sciences (DES), University of Kerala. For the students, research scholars and teachers, it was an enlightening session to attend his talk on 'Aquatic Insect Research and Teaching in East Asia'.

Aquatic insects including Plecoptera, Trichoptera, Ephemeroptera, Coleoptera etc could be good indicators for environmental pollutants, Dr. John unveiled. An avid study on the distribution and life of these insects would make it easier to identify the presence and estimate the quantities of various pollutants. Chasing these aquatic insects to unveil the calamitous concentrations of pollutants is otherwise called biomonitoring.

The biomonitoring simplifies the entire study of aquatic pollution, whereas the equipment-based interventions are always laborious and complex.
The benefit of insect-based aquatic pollution study are:
1. Number of species and specimens are considerably large
2. Insects tend more to stay in one locality than fish
3. Aquatic insects live for nearly one year – an appropriate period of study

With his pragmatic mantra of seeing pollution through the eyes of aquatic insects, Prof. Dr. John Morse has already toured Russia and East Asian countries including China, Taiwan, Mongolia, Korea and Thailand. And his session at DES has surely led the audience along the shores of entomological learning that is already as immense as the sea.

- Akhila S. Nair after attending the session at DES.

Photos: Kannan and Dipu Sukumaran

Writing for the birds

Varun is a sixth semester Mechanical Engineering student at the College of Engineering Thiruvananthapuram (CET). He is possessed with a love towards the nature ever since his school days. His stanch belief that 'no software in this world can generate water and food', is self-explanatory of his undaunted passion for environment. When his burning passion was ignited under the inspiring guidance of Dr. Thankamony, teacher and patron of the college's environmental club, Varun started waving his pen for the feathered-beauties of the CET.

It was not a common sort of scribbling on ecological thoughts, but was an authentic book on the 56 species of birds that dwell in the sprawling 45 hectors of the CET. Appositely named, 'Feathered Friends of our Campus', the 80-page book gives some magnetic information about the different species of birds. The book carries photos of and facts about the birds that surely instills a love for birds in the minds of readers.

"The book is a joint effort of my friends and me. It's a step towards bringing awareness among the Engineering students and others about the wonderful world of birds", says Varun. The book was also an opening to the nature, he added.

Qualitative and quantitative surveys were carried through four consecutive Sundays. The data from the field was transformed into a tangible statistics. When the college proudly published the book, the amazing information it carried, was simply indigestible to many. About the feedback Varun says, "everybody was surprised to realize that there were 56 species of birds in the our campus."

Varun and his enthusiastic friends who untiringly worked for realizing the book, now receive encouraging gestures from teachers, students. Praise comes even from far away campuses. Yet, more gratifying for them was the token of appreciation they could receive from scientists and veterans in the field. Varun and his friends attribute their success to the unlimited support provided by their gurus, Susanth and Sivakumar. They also thank Dr. Thankamony for offering them such a big canvass of green ideas.

These boys share a common dream of proving before the world that engineers can also enjoy nature, carrying both profession and passion side by side. Environmentally aware groups like the teachers and students of CET can surely offer a new lease of life to the perishing silent members of our ecological system.
- K.P.Sivakumar