Tree Walk

It’s not a mere visit, but a trigger to do something good for our nature

Last Sunday February 12 was a good day with the evening spent on Tree Walk with my son. It was good only because so many volunteers had been doing good work all these years with persistent efforts to create and sustain lush native trees in the Kotturpuram Tree Park.

We all assembled around 4:15 in the evening, Abirami and Gajendran from CTC and Nizhal team welcomed us and started the Tree walk for kids on time. It was inspiring to know that Gajendran was with Nizhal team since his high school for the past 10 years. So we all are going to hear from a person who was part of the bootstrap team.

He showed us the first tree which was Fig – “Aththi” in Tamil. He gave us interesting insight in why it is important to protect and grow native trees – as to not only for preserving soil, but also for the birds and other insects which thrive only on certain native trees. Fig is one such tree, where certain kind of wasps do the pollination. He showed us the flower which appeared like a raw fruit itself and told how the flower would later transform to a fig which we eat.

Next we saw “Pungam or Punnai”. I have seen this tree at many places in my neighbourhood and could recognize it because of the leaves which has some small circled fungus over it. I had always thought that the white circled patches are because the tree might have been affected with some pests. However, that was a myth, and Gajendran told that it was a special tree leaves which has this fungus for a specific growth. Some insects which come and sit on the fungus would get trapped by the fungus and the leaves pass on the nutrition from the insect to the trees. Thanks to Gajendran to clear my myth. Also he added that “Vilakennai” is made from the fruit of this tree, and the dried flowers of this tree can be used a fertilizer for plants which are not blooming for many months. Also some decades back Mylapore had a lot of Punnai trees hence also called a Punnai Vanam and as Peacocks come to these trees it got the name “Mayilap” (Peacock) “oor” (place)

Real Ashoka was the next one we visited and I was amazed to know that they are creating a small garden full of Ashoka trees calling it as “Asoka vanam”. He told only on these trees sparrows used to build their nests. So growing of these trees are important to foster the growth of birds.

Next was “Purasu” – the name of palce Purasaiwakkam in Chennai came because there were many Purasu trees there.. Not sure what is the current status. Earlier people used to make plates (thai ellai) out of the dried leaves of Purasai. It is called the real flame of the forest tree and has 3 leaves in one bundle like Vilvam so used for Pooja.

Now we could see our familiar “Veppa Maram” – Neem Tree. It is one of the best trees which has medicinal properties, like can be used to protect papers from getting affected by fungus. I thought I can put some of the leaves in out Grocery storage boxes which is often spotted with pests.

The mere name of the next tree gives happiness, yes it is “Magizha Maram” – Stress buster or Bullet wood tree. This tree has a unique significance, that sitting under it and smelling the fragrance of the flowers (Maghizampoo) would give pleasant feeling to our minds. Also someone suggested we can use it instead of our chemical based odonil room freshners J The fruits of this tree, has a sharp edge at the end so it got the name Bullet Wood.

Another medicinal tree we came across was “Vada Narayanan” – the leaves of which is used effectively for treating Vadam – kind of paralysis disease. It is also called White Gulmohar. What a good way to preserve our native medicinal trees by Nizhal Team. I have never heard of this tree and when I shared this info to my mother-in-law she told, there used to be many such Vada Narayanan trees at her village. I hope by the efforts of Nizhal team I will still be able to pass this info to next generation.

Next tree visit comes with interesting stories about Avvayar and monkey-crocodile story; yes it’s the Naval Maram or Jamun Tree. Very nice to see a small girl sharing the Avvayar story.

Arjuna tree welcomed us with its wide branches nad white barks. This is also called as “Neer Maruthu”. It had white barks, which would be shed off every year and gets new one. The barks of this tree can be used to cure heart diseases. Also certain kind of big butterflies comes only to these trees. The pupa of these butterflies are big and is used to make Tussar Silk. A visitor also shared the information that this tree was the one on which Lord Krishna was tied on a rope and later broke this into two by banging on an Ural (wooded flour grinding machine).

After visiting these trees, Gajendran showed us how the place was 10 years back and how it is now. This is certainly an example of what a persistent volunteer activity can bring to the society. As one could say, innovation comes out of constrained environment, it was amazing to see how they came up with tyre based fences when the plastic fences were stolen. With the absence of electricity and water pipe connection, I could completely understand how difficult it would have been to get this place to such a wonderful tree park.  He conducted an interesting game for kids by giving them dried leaves of certain trees and ask the kids to identify and match it with the correct tree having those leaves. My son thoroughly enjoyed the walk and the game and asked me when this will be arranged again.

The message that I personally take from this visit, is we need not only get inspired by the efforts of Nizhal team, what is more important is to be an inspiration by being part of their voluntary activity or initiate one in your neighbourhood. Thanks Ainthinai and Nizhal for organizing this Kids Tree Walk.

Our memorable visit to ISRO

I never thought that I would have a chance to get a closer look of rockets, that too in our own ground ISRO. I do not know if I would get another opportunity like this unless God bestows some miracles. As we did not take any photo there, I wanted to jot down all our experiences at ISRO, so that some day after many years, I can cherish them vividly.

 

Thanks to my friend Geetha and her brother Mr. Ramkumar for arranging our trip to ISRO.

The day after Pongal was holiday for all of us and fortunately working day at ISRO. So we decided to visit ISRO on that day. To our surprise we were joined by Geetha’s family and 2 more families as well, which made it a techie tour. Now on to ISRO visit.

              We went to the ISRO Museum first to get a glimpse of all the discoveries and concepts related to planetary science and human’s achievements in attempting to explore other planets. It was a news to me that NASA has sent explorers to Jupiter on 1970s itself. Someone was telling that we should not compare achievements of NASA  & ISRO as it would be similar to comparing grandparents and grandchildren. However I am very happy and proud that India is among the only6 countries whi are having infrastructure to launch rockets. That is a big feat for a country like India. We were introduced to concepts of escape velocity, orbits and the two satellite launch vehicles namely Polar Satellite Launching Vehicle (PSLV) and Geo-stationary launching vehicle (GSLV). Though I knew these two names before, now I know the actual purpose of these two. PSLV places a satellite on the polar orbit and which then would scan the earth from North to South. This is primarily used for forecasting purposes. GSLV places a satellite on geo-stationary orbit which means it would face the same part of earth always and are used for communication & broadcasting purposes.

I had many questions about satellite’s age (determined by each country who is launching it), what happens after satellite’s end of life (they are lowered from their orbit and made to destroy & fall over sea) orbit allocation and space debris (managed by an EU organization) and many more. While I was engulfed on these discussions, I heard a thud sound and a cry, by none other than my daughter. While playing she had fallen on the ground and got hurt near her eyebrows. We rushes to ISRO hospital (how can we leave a place without visiting its hospital) and by God’s grace it’s a small bruise. On return we had our lunch at SRO canteen and proceeded to visit many important places.

Firstly, we went to see the block from where all the scientists observe the rocket launch. This is the same place shown in TVs during launch. We were explained how different teams could communicate & confirm their readiness to launch, and some exceptional cases like what  happens when a rocket does not kick off or follow trajectory as expected etc. Then we moved on to rocket building places. There are 3 stages on a rocket which provides the initial thrust, mileage and force to put the satellite on orbit. For this different kinds of combustion fuel are used which has its own pros & cons. Dolid fues are highlt combustive and gives maximum thrust in minimum time. Just a small spark would trigger the combustion and cannot be stopped once ignited. Therefore needs to be properly used. Combustion of liquid fuels can be controlled and provides good mileage of putting the rocket against gravitational force. Cryogenic fuels are those in which combustible gases are highly pressurized and stored in small containers. They enable low space utilization and provide high thrust. However a small leakage would cause great damage. Therefore has to be handled with caution. We came to know that a part had a leakage in the order of mm or nm and led to failure in the rocket launch. Later we visited the rocket launch area. I came to know that there are 2 types of launch pad namely, Build, Transfer, launch and Build on Launch Pad.  As the name implies, former one indicates that the rocket parts are assembled in a place 1 km from the launch pad and then moved to launch pad few days before launch. In this case, the alignment & tuning check needs to be performed again. However it provides the flexibility that whichever rocket is ready for launch can be brought to launch pad. In the latter case, entire rocket building happens on launch pad and the entire support building would move away leaving the rocket alone on the launch pad. I wondered how such a big building would move away on the rails! What a technology achievement & advancement?! Also one launch pad can be used for both PSLV and GSLV satellite launch. During the rocket launch, no one ae allowed to be in the vicinity till 7km distance. It would create huge thunderbolt noise and flames that would make humans get heart attack.

There is a big pit underneath the launch pad which can withstand heavy temperatures, flames and smoke. When we visited the top of the rocket assembly building we could see a nearby tall water tower which I thought used for providing water for the campus. Later came to know that it was built to nullify the effects of high frequency noise generated during initial few seconds of the launch. Otherwise the noise was having an effect over the calibration of satellites placed on the rocket top.

We were totally thrilled to see the places & things in real from where the rocket launch is happening. By now all of us were tired of just visiting these places, just think of those scientists who work round the clock in these places and marked our country on to the global map in space technology.

And, Finally I got answer for my question on “Why Sriharikota?” in the sense what is significant about this place that it has been chosen for launch. The answer appears interesting, that it’s the second best place in earth to launch rocket based on the fact that the co-ordinates are positioned in such a way that with minimal thrust, the Earth’s orbital direction would provide additional force (at no cost) and give the rocket escape velocity to go out of Earth’s gravitational force.

Also it being in East coast of Bay of Bengal has a huge sea space to provide maximum distance to be covered within first stage of rocket (as the remains of first stage needs to be thrown on to sea).

The first best place for rocket launch is French Guiana. We also visited an old Shiva temple near ISRO and came to know that there are so many Siva Lingams unearthed while constructing ISRO, which marked the place to be blessed with God’s wishes.

ISRO with its extraordinary space missions is making us to be a proud India. Best wishes for all their endeavours.

GHCI 2016 - a review

Conferences are always good to attend for many reasons like catching up with latest trends, what & where the industry is heading and of course goodies. Grace Hopper Conference 2016 was organized as a 3 day conference and is special for it had a theme of "Celebration" of women in computing which meant lot of technical tracks alongside motivational career track tailored for women. This is the first time I attended this 3-day conference. Being a family woman with 2 kids, I decided to attend the main 2 day event and skipped the first day event having some key note sessions. Nevertheless, I wanted to share my experiences and thoughts about this conference.

My inclination towards attending this conference was to understand the trend in Machine Learning and Data Science (ML & DS) and also in general how women are progressing in their technology career, the struggles & difficulties faced and how they circumvented them.

The 2nd day conference had following 4 tracks namely ML & DS, Open Source, Human Comuputer Interaction (HCI), Emerging Technology, of which I decided to focus on ML & DS.
The first presentation on "Data Science for Health Care" topic was about "Pneumonia detection using ML". It gave me a strikingly different perception about how ML is been used for pneumonia detection and early intervention. With the help of previous history of factors leading to pneumonia, doctors could now predict if a patient's symptoms could lead to pneumonia. The second presentation was also related to health care, where in the researcher deployed ML algorithms to understand bio-molecular interaction of a particular protein type. Though it was a bit difficult to follow, what made it interesting was, how she used SVM, Random Forest algorith,s on her dataset, undelining the fact that both could not extract much features and is not effective in prediction. I could learn, how to evaluate the applicability of a ML algorithm to any domain.

Followed this was the talk I was waiting for by our own Cisco Veteran Mr. Srikanth Narasimhan on how deep learning is applied to Business Applications. He shed light on how machine learning evolved over the decades starting with perceptrons and neural networks. However they had a limitation that those models cannot simalate new data from the learning and also could not scale.  Another main hindrance is the non availability of a large data set with labels to verify the output in real world.  This paved way to "Deep Belief Networks" which solved two significant problems seen in other methods, namely they could not infer information from the unobserved variables of dataset and could not generate new metadata from rich dataset. Unsupervised Machine Learning algorithms addressed these problems and Srikanth wonderfully linked this evolution history to the business application Diet Guru and explained how his team deployed RBM - an unsupervised machine learning algorithm. He stated how the next gen networks would infer, interpret and predict using such ML algorithms. Next came IBM's "Whatson" presentation - a ML based IoT platform with rich API's that can be customized to any domain like cancer research.

With more of DS & ML since morning, I thought of lending my ears towards Virtual Reality. Thanks for the decision for it turned out to be my best presentation in the conference. A team from Microsoft presented their Hololens product (similar to Google glass) and explained how its been used in treating person affected with autism spectrum. Besides the cause where its deployed, I was impressed by the way she presented the Hololens App platform, its simplicity and the need of apps to transform the lives of autism affected people. Though the underlying intention could be to sell their Hololens product and vouch on app developers, the manner in which it was put forth made the presentation stand out.

Following this was the workshop on "R & Python" in Predictive modelling. The handson session on R language given by Maheshwari from Cisco was very good, that I could grasp it instantly. Kudos to their efforts in sharing the preparatory slides beforehand which made me hit the ground running. Being already did Python and Scikit programing found the workshop to reinforce my learning. In crux, I understood R technically and also learnt that I need to open up, structure my thoughts and share the knowledge I have acquired in this domain.

Post Lunch sessions were from Flipkart and Amazon on how they are solving online retailer problems using ML. Some of them are identifying anomalous/rogue users, reviews & rating. It was interesting to know how Amazon benefited by using visual deep learning in delivering features like "Similar products/designs, recently bought ones" etc. The day however ended with an okayish session on "The art of secure coding". Perhaps after securing Cisco's Security Ninja belt, I might have found the session too naive.

The conference on third day had sessions on Career Mastery, Entrepreneurship, Management excellence, etc. I peeped into one of the sessions and found it to be all "known" stuff. These were the things which are perceived as "known" but hard to implement. I was looking for more practical ways to implement which I could not see them delivered on the sessions. So I decided to visit the company booths and demos, get to know their work and try my hand getting goodies. Below are the interesting updates from various companies.

1. GE Health care - It was exciting to know about Predix - The Industrial IoT platform which offers Data Science Analytics using cloud deployed machine learning algorithms. They claimed that this was already been deployed and used in big industries like Aerospace, Medical, Wind Power. Being inquisitive to know more, I had a 1-1 discussion and came to know how they developed Predix and their strategy for Go-To-Market. The platform is been deployed - Yes, however, it was deployed on the domains, where they own the assets. It is offered as Platform-as-a-Service (Paas) thereby incur recurring revenues. So they own both the risk and growth of the Predix, while slowly trying to acquire external customers. Very good strategy for innovation deployment indeed. (https://www.predix.io/)

2. Adobe - Adobe had a demo of their latest FREE products Photoshop Fix, Adobe Draw. Very easy to use and good to know to use it for creating my posters. (www.adobe.com/in/products/fix.html)

3. Alexa from Amazon - Alexa is a voice controlled IoT product from Amazon, something similar to Siri from Apple, Cortona from Microsoft. However, Alexa is a bit more intelligent that it could process complex commands from a person and act based on them. It can be integrated with other home appliances and also in industrial automation. Have to watch how this IoT product is evolving in the market. (https://developer.amazon.com/alexa)

4. Arm educational kit - Arm's educational wing demonstrated a ARM Cortex processor built by ST Micro which can be used as Robot. Their main aim is to reach to more university students by donating these products and give them their development environment to create products using ARM. I could infer that they want to get more students' mind share for ARM processor technical proficiency and also get their involvement in developing innovative products.

5. GE portable scanning machine - This is a path breaking device from GE health care which is a portable Ultrasound scanner device that can be taken to remote villages to perform abdominal scan, pregnancy scan tests etc. It would be a saviour to people living in remote areas. 

6. Microsoft bot - Got to know how Microsoft's bot framework operate and how easy it is to deploy bot for websites having social media plugins from various social media channels like Twitter, Skype etc. (https://dev.botframework.com/)

7. Cisco's Next Gen Network protection firewall - Last but not the least, paid a visit to Cisco's demo about next gen network protection. They demonstrated two wonderful demos about how our products safeguard the network threats. I was amazed to see Stealthwatch product (http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/security/stealthwatch/index.html)  about the network anomaly detection using Machine Learning. It's exactly the similar idea which we presented in one of our Hackathon and later wanted to build on that. I wish I could spend more time on the Machine Learning technology on an innovative product that come under Cisco's market landscape.

Thanks to Cisco for giving me this opportunity to attend GHCI'2016
Fingers Crossed and Brains ticking - to present some cool ML product next time in GHCI?!

Learning is always a pleasure - this time car driving

Few years back, I was not interested and also reluctant to drive a car myself. As with every other thing in our lives, there was a change in my attitude towards car driving. Recently, I thought I have to learn car driving for very many reasons like to be capable of driving car during emergency situations, to be a good grandma cruising around the city with grandchildren in car (well, futuristic thinking that in future, car driving becomes indispensable like two wheeler now).
Okay, jokes behind, I thought it is high time to learn a new skill especially car driving which needs confidence and courage to maneouvre in a city like Chennai. So I decided to join car driving school during my maternity break. Thanks to my mother in law who encouraged me to learn and told she did not get those opportunities then.
So finally with a month's time frame I took car driving lessons and also got driver's license. The test for license was easy - just we need to start the car, pace it down slowly to pause and start again without stopping it. I thought how can they determine driver's capability with this simple test. Indeed it is a simple test, however, after cruising around the Chennai city, I could completely understand how the test is evaluating us if we are ready to really drive in the congested roads of Chennai.

So now that I have my driver's license am I courageous enough to start driving on my own? No, obviously not and that is because of the sheer traffic and the unpredictable circumstances that are happening on the road. Without confidence on us that we could handle these unpredictable circumstances (for example, while driving on a side a bike or a person from another side appears all of a sudden and goes in the wrong direction), I strongly recommend not to drive car. Nevertheless, confidence comes from practice, but practicing alone in this case is risky. So having a good car driver as my husband, I had to look up to him to guide me in driving.

I used to hear from some doctors, that they may not be able to do surgery for their own family members because of emotional attachment. Also, I have heard that astrologers would not prefer looking into his children's horoscope because emotional bonding may conceal foreseeing the negative things that are going to happen. On the same lines, I can say, having my husband as a guide to car driving comes with a coin having two sides. He knows your strength, weakness and can guide you appropriately. However, with personal attachment, he may want to prevent accidents, damage to car etc and therefore may not give you leeway to attempt car driving on own.
My husband though guided me well in handling many situations, his sudden out pour during my small mistakes made me more tensed and gets my brain blanked out. One such was in a signal that even after many attempts I could not start our car and get it moving (now remembering the simple test during driver's license!), his repeated high tone instructions made my brain blank and we had to swap seats. I became embarrassed and resolved to learn driving well and drive confidently.

Without time & focus, learning a new thing and especially mastering it may not be possible. So I decided to take 20 days off from my work (before I would join new company) and  learn car driving to the level I can drive it on my own. Found a good driving instructor who can guide and teach me in our own car. His first few words are "When I am driving, I should not damage others/properties even though they are wrong. However, I should also be assertive and display confidence." So with that thought instilled in my mind and the instructor's able guidance get me going. Within few days, I got confidence on myself and could also predict which places are prone to violation of rules. Therefore one fine day, when my instructor could not come for the class, I thought its time for me to venture out. I did take the route which I was familiar with, and could drive back home safely, albeit the car did stop at some places. But I gathered courage now on how to handle it. The moment, I reached safely, I called to my husband and asked "Do you know what I just did?", to my pleasant surprise he replied, "You drove on your own, right?". Thanks to the instructor.

After this training and venturing out on my own, my husband provided his consent to start doing the driving on my own and these days I drive to work and other places. More than my learning of car driving, I would like to share the most important highlight of what I liked during my driving, which is

Being on car, I stop and stop others to give way

         * The thanks sign shown by an auto driver with many school children on his auto, when I    slowed down my car and gave him the way to cross
         * A smiley thanks displayed by a husband who was waiting to cross the road with his wife        having injured and stitched legs, when I stopped on the main road and gave them the time to cross.
         * I think I have the power now to stop not only my car, but also the vehicles behind me, to give  time and way for others. :)

As always, it is indeed a pleasant journey and experience while you attempt to do some new learning. Have to think what I would like to learn next from my long list of "To Learn"

PS: Btw, I had to say that the 20 days off I took from joining new job, gave me an opportunity to join another big company. God's grace always showers best.