Smart Cradle’ developed by students of NIE College placed at Bapuji Children’s Home in Mysuru | Express
Mysuru :
Though many orphanages have cradles for ‘unwanted babies,’ there is no guarantee that the babies will be safe if they are not picked up within a short time.
To overcome this, students of Industrial Automation & Robotics at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the National Institute of Engineering (NIE) have developed a ‘Smart Cradle.’
The cradle was donated to Bapuji Children’s Home at Gokulam here on Saturday.
When a newborn is placed in this cradle, the system senses the presence of the baby and sends alarms through wireless technology. It also sends an SMS to the authorities concerned to take immediate action.
The completely automated system has a smart baby bed designed to detect the presence of a baby on it. It has a spring supported moving platform, which goes down when a baby is placed and comes up when the baby is taken back. Below the platform is a switch system and battery- powered electronic hardware.
The hardware is housed inside an ingress protected box making it weather proof. The alarm system placed in the orphanage office, which can be at the distance of around 50-60 metres from the cradle, gets an alarm through wireless technology. The alarm goes on until action is taken. An SMS module is placed which sends an SMS to the authorities within a few minutes.
Ajit N N, Rakesh K M and Keshava Prakash V who have developed the cradle under the supervision of K S Lakshmikanth and Dr K R Prakash, said there is always a risk of even stray dogs eating the baby.
This smart baby bed is designed to protect the infant from the environment and animals. This indigenously designed product can be placed in front of government hospitals and privately run orphanages to help save infants from any probable harm from animals, insects and the weather.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Karnataka / by Express News Service / June 27th, 2016
Kharif agricultural activities in Ballari district is going on with a digital touch, with farmers using their mobile phones for information on improved agricultural practices, steps to be taken before sowing, importance of crop insurance scheme, among other things.
“As per instructions of Agriculture Minister Krishna Byre Gowda, we have created a group of progressive farmers in each one of the 27 hoblis in the district.
Agricultural Officer manning the Raitha Samparka Kendras will pass on all required information about crop insurance, suitable crop to be cultivated, precautionary measures to be taken to protect crops from pests and diseases, among other things, through social media (WhatsApp). The use of social media has been very easy and helpful to convey the message to farmers. Gradually, we would include more number of farmers in the group,” Sharnappa Mudagal, Joint Director of Agriculture, told The Hindu .
T. Satyanarayan, a farmer and a member of the group, said that farmers can now access the required information with much ease.
Shantala, Agricultural Officer, Raitha Samparka Kendra, Ballari, said that the response from farmers to messages/information sent has been very encouraging.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Karnataka / by Special Correspondent / Ballari – June 30th, 2016
SLICE OF THE PAST:This photo of Bengaluru’s old Town Hall features in the Cantonment walking tour organised by Bangalore Storyscapes, an oral history project by the Centre for Public History.— photo: courtesy of G.G. Welling Photography Studios
Oral history project exhibits some of its collections at a conference
When the milkman knocked on the door, one woman was assigned to ensure that he didn’t cheat while milking the cow. In another recording, a woman described the coffee ice-cream at India Coffee House, which was on the menu for the princely sum of six annas. The stories of milkmen, local wrestling legends, entrepreneurs, murderers, and singers finally have a home, thanks to the Bangalore Storyscapes project.
The oral history project, founded four years ago by the Centre for Public History at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, exhibited some of its work at the International Oral History Association Conference in the city on Wednesday.
“There aren’t very good archives or books on contemporary history,” said Avehi Menon, curator of the Centre for Public History (CPH) and treasurer of the Oral History Association of India. Some of the earliest memories the centre has on record date back to the 1930s, with tales of orchestra pits and silent films.
The project also details how the city felt the tremors of major historical events in their day-to-day lives, said Ms. Menon. For instance, the flour rations distributed during the Second World War resulted in the iconic Koshy’s, which began as a bakery.
How it began
The centre began by collecting stories from residents of the Cantonment area, and the rich oral history they gathered inspired Ms. Menon and her colleagues to create walking tours in the area, featuring audio from their interviews. The walks are designed to bring the stories back to the people of Bengaluru, said Priyanka Seshadri, a tour guide.
“We wanted to allow people to take ownership of public spaces,” said Ms. Menon. “This is history they contribute to.”
The CPH team aims to add to their oral history archive in order to make the collection more representative of the city. Their current sampling features more men than women because of the project’s focus on public spaces. This is something they would like to rectify. “We began by talking to business owners on M.G. Road, and most of them are men,” Ms. Menon said.
As the project gained popularity, the organisers received funding from the India Foundation for the Arts, with the goal of integrating the tradition of oral history with photography, art and cinema.
Even as the centre subsequently shifted focus to cinema in the Cantonment area, women were excluded from the conversation. For instance, one interviewee recalled that his sister was barred from watching Hollywood movies as his grandfather was worried they were too violent.
Domestic matters
To correct this gender bias, the team is now shifting focus to documenting the domestic life in Bengaluru. “Some women tell stories of the milkman coming to their house and cheating them if they didn’t stand and watch him milk the cow,” Ms. Menon said, adding that people like milkmen and plumbers would be invisible to historians without the contributions of women.
One concern is that the project interviews participants only in English, a practice that self-selects those from middle-class or upper middle-class backgrounds.
Keeping these limitations of Bangalore Storyscapes in mind, the organisers are excited to be approached by citizens who contest the version of events showcased in the project. “We ask to interview them also,” Ms. Menon said, explaining that she has created a platform for a multitude of viewpoints. “The way India is moving with the changing of our history books, it helps to remember that there is no single, definitive narrative of what happened,” she said.
We wanted to allow people to take ownership of public spaces. This is history they contribute to.
Avehi Menon,treasurer, Oral History Association of India
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Bengaluru / by Kasturi Pananjady / Bengaluru – June 30th, 2016
When oral historian Urvashi Butalia joined the publishing house Zubaan, she was told that it was the first time a woman was being hired in an executive position.
Usually, they only hired women as secretaries or filing clerks. But today, most important positions in publishing, in terms of content, is held by women, she says.
The author of The Other Side of Silence spoke to City Express about her feminist oral history project.
On her website, Posterwomen, Butalia invites women to share their personal histories.
Activists who fought for causes like women’s empowerment, abolition of dowry and curbing of lesbian suicides shared their struggles with the historian, whose project aims at archiving their wisdom.
What drew her to oral history? Batalia says, “I like listening and talking to people. It find great value in the stories I find, small or big.
But when she started out, it was a challenge to do something different in the field, she admits.
While her family was supportive of her, she knew that as a women, she would not be able to make it to the top. “There were instances of sexual harassment besides the general indifference and disbelief towards high-achieving women,” Batalia shares.
The real struggle, however, was that the women she wanted to connect with often felt they had nothing important to say and their self-confidence was extremely low.
“I have realised that there is a lot to learn from the lives of even ordinary women, such as their way of working, courage and resilience,” she says.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Bengaluru / by Aishwariya Mudaliar / June 30th, 2016
Members of the Mangalore Bicycle Club planting saplings at Baikampady Industrial Estate in Mangaluru on Sunday.—Photo: special arrangement
Members of Mangalore Bicycle Club plant 50 saplings
Members of the Mangalore Bicycle Club celebrated the fifth anniversary of the club founding day in a manner suitable to what they stand for—preserving the nature and conserving the environment—by planting 50 saplings of different varieties of trees and undertaking the responsibility of their growth.
Nearly hundred cyclists, who assembled at the City Corporation Circle at Lal Bagh early Sunday morning, pedalled towards Baikampady Industrial Area in Mangaluru and converged on the Prakash Offset Printers’ premises, which belongs to one of the members, Anand Prabhu. As they regrouped themselves, Lions district past governor K.C. Prabhu and environmentalist Dinesh Nayak, addressed the gathering.
Mr. Prabhu commended the riders and said that more Mangalureans should come forward for such initiatives. Mr. Nayak spoke about the medicinal values of saplings that were ready to be planted.
He said that fruit-bearing trees too were important for the conservation of environment as they were the ones sustaining the fauna in the environment. The saplings were provided by the Forest Department.
Later, one plant each was taken by two members, who planted them along the boundary line of the premises.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Mangaluru / by Special Correspondent / Mangaluru – June 28th, 2016
Archaeologists have not just discovered 70 burials from the Iron Age in Koppa, Karnataka.
Koppa is an early Iron Age megalithic burial site, located on the right bank of the Cauvery in Periyyapatna taluk, Mysuru district.
The discovery at Koppa in Mysuru district shows people also grew crops alongside
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Archaeologists have not just discovered 70 burials from the Iron Age in Koppa, Karnataka, they have, for the first time, shown that people also lived near burials and cultivated ragi and paddy crops. Koppa is an early Iron Age megalithic burial site, located on the right bank of the Cauvery in Periyyapatna taluk, Mysuru district.
“Koppa was discovered in 1868 by captain Cole, who was then the superintendent of Coorg (under Madras presidency). In the same year, he opened up 17 megaliths or burials. Later, KK Subbayya excavated a few more burials in Koppa. We, however, had no information about their habitation. My aim was therefore, to ascertain where people lived and I started my investigations from 2013,” Arjun Rao, archaeologist from the department of archaeology, Deccan College Post Graduate and Research Institute, Pune, told Bangalore Mirror.
Though more than 3,000 burial sites have been identified across the Deccan Plateau and burials range from five to 1,000 at these sites, little is known about their habitation and settlement patterns. The current study is an attempt to bridge this gap. The author initiated explorations across five densely spread megalithic sites across the Cauvery river bank, covering Kushalnagar, Kudige, Ramaswamy Kanive, Heggedehalli and Koppa. Intensive and systematic archaeological explorations were conducted during 2013-2015 in a nine square km area, centring the Koppa burial site.
While archaeologists believed that the megaliths had been destroyed, Arjun during his explorations, discovered that around 70 of them existed in the periphery of the villages in Koppa on granitic escarpments. Bunding of field boulders across the agricultural fields helped in locating the site.
“The ongoing surface survey project has gained enough evidences to consider Koppa as a habitation-cum-burial site, with major offsite activities,” said the findings published in the Current Science journal.
Iron Age in Koppa, according to the research paper, was a dispersed settlement and had a strong belief in megalithism or honouring the dead, which was at the “centre of their habitation and overall functioning of the society”. “The significance of this research is that for the first time, we have an understanding of the landscape and their settlement pattern over the upper reaches of the Cauvery river bank. We can now conclude that people had located themselves within the given natural resources under tropical wet climatic condition of Western Ghats and the control of such resource locations might have played a decisive role in the societal and political functioning,” said Rao.
Till recently, experts believed that either the habitational evidences were covered by forest regeneration, or that the society was largely made up of nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoral communities, resulting in flimsy settlement deposits. However, since a decade, experts are getting a better understanding of their habitation and subsistence activities.
The landscape of the site, water availability and a look at the grain evidences from habitational sites or directly from the burials reveal that ragi and paddy cultivation could have been near the habitation and streams. Abundant supply of newly introduced crops like paddy and ragi (continued from southern Neolithic phase) in the burials substantiates large-scale production and practice of both wet and dry cultivation, says the findings. “Koppa burial excavations have given us the abundant supply of such food grains, so that means that they were locally produced crops,” he said.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Bangalore / Mihika Basu, TNN / June 27th, 2016
Bengaluru mom Laxmipriya Srivastav bagged the first runner-up and the Mrs Beautiful Smile at Mrs India International contest held in Chennai recently.
The contest saw 40 finalists from across the country. It comprised six rounds and workshops for self-assessment, time management, innovative ways of draping sarees, hair care and styling, followed by yoga and meditation to overcome anxiety and stress before the finale.
Laxmipriya, native of a village near Allahabad, has always admired Sushmitha Sen, former Miss Universe, a single mother, and an independent woman.
Laxmipriya lives in the city with her husband Tanmai and their three-year-old son Vivaan.
She works in Pharmed Limited as Senior Product Manager. Her professional career has been progressive in the past eight years. She has also the title of ‘Junior scientist’ from The National Academy of Sciences India to her credit.
As a teenager, she won a painting competition organised by the Indian Oil Corporation, and represented Allahabad in a play during Natya Mahotsav, a cultural event organised by North Central Zone Cultural Centre (NCZCC).
Writing, painting and acting are among her passions.
She cherishes two years of working with Doordarshan as a 12-13-year-old. Currently, she is editor of her company’s in-house magazine Supermom.
She is also associated with NGOs like Aasra and Global Headstart Mission to address medical needs and contribute to the education of the underprivileged.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Bengaluru / by Express Features / June 22nd, 2016
Maharaja of Mysore Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar will today tie the nuptial knot with Trishika Kumari Singh , who belongs to a royal family of Rajasthan.
The iconic Mysore Palace Amba Vilas Palace has been decked up for the royal wedding of Wodeyar family scion Yaduveer.
Trishika is the daughter of Harshvardhan Singh and Maheshri Kumari from the Dungarpur royal family in Rajasthan. The marriage ceremony will take place at the kalyana mandapa at the karkataka lagna and savitra mahurat time between 9.05 a.m. and 9.35 a.m.
The elaborate pre-marriage rituals had commenced on June 24.
The groom took a ‘yenne snana’ or oil bath early on Saturday morning, followed by a ‘pada puja’ of Parakala Mutt’s Abhinava Vagheesha Brahmatantra Swatantra Swamy , who is the family’s rajguru.
As per established custom, the rituals began in the Mysore Palace in the presence of Pramoda Devi, the Queen mother and other family elders.
24-year-old Yaduveer was crowned as the ostensible head of the erstwhile Mysuru royal family in a traditional ceremony held on May 28 last year.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / New Home> City> Bangalore / ANI / June 27th, 2016
Researching historical details can get confusing at times. This story for instance, begins in a Scottish city called Glasgow on a street named after the Saracen people from the Middle Ages. It then gets directed to a Victorian bandstand in a historic park laid out by a military engineer in South India’s tech-hub, Bengaluru. And if you think it’s quite knotted up already, that’s not the end of it. But maybe that’s also the fun of it.
Parks historian and author Paul Rabbitts says that the bandstand (or `band house’ as it was first called) was perhaps inspired by popular 18th century pleasure gardens like Vauxhall in London who also offered music pavilions and exotic entertainment including hot air balloons, tightrope walkers and fireworks. The bandstands were envisioned as a decorative focal point for the park and provided acoustic shelter for the brass, wind and military bands that played there. Their rich decorative elements and curved shapes also seemed to reflect oriental influences like the pagodas and chattri’s from the eastern corners of the empire. The first domed structure was reportedly built in 1861 at the Royal Horticultural Society, South Kensington. The concept soon captured the imagination of 19th century Britain where he says, approximately 1,200 bandstands were built between 1860 and WWII. Though these public parks were primarily designed for relaxation, they were also interpreted as an attempt to `humanise’ the grim townscapes that emerged during the Industrial Revolution.
The Cubbon Park bandstand with its traditional octagonal shape sits on the same axis as the Vidhana Soudha, Attara Kacheri and Government Museum. It is said to have been gifted to the park in 1914 by Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV, the Maharaja of Mysore and initially placed near the Seshadri Iyer Memorial Hall. It was shifted to its current location in 1937, over what was once called the Ringwood Circle.
Iron was strong, durable but light. Molten iron could also be poured into pre-fabricated moulds. This enabled accurate replication and extensive repetition. `Cast’ iron therefore became popular for ornamental and commercial purposes. The framework for Cubbon Park’s cast iron bandstand took shape in the Glasgow based Saracen Foundry, owned by architectural iron casters Walter Macfarlane and Company Ltd. The company was set up in a disused brass foundry on Saracen Street in 1851 and soon became a famous designer-manufacturer of ornamental fountains, park and garden seats, conservatories, flower vases, baths, pipes and fittings right up till WWII.
Bandstands fell out of favour following WWII but iconic Macfarlane and Co. Ltd cast iron designs were still spotted around the world. They included the main (northern side) entrance gates to Lalbagh and the conservatory style Glass House.
The Lalbagh bandstand is believed to have been conceptualised during the tenure of Superintendent Mr. William New (1854-1864). He organised the first few `Lalbagh Shows’ around it in the late 1860’s before the Glass House came up in 1890. Mr. John Cameron who succeeded New in 1874 recorded its repair and renovation; a granite platform was also added and the wooden roof was improved.
Old timers recall orchestras and military bands playing regularly at bandstands in the city, including Cole’s Park, while city chronicler Mrs Maya Jayapal mentions that live music was scheduled for the fourth Thursday of every month in the 1920’s. The bandstands now accommodate deep breathing pranayama practitioners in the morning, sleeping somari’s in the afternoon and performances by local school children and classical musicians on weekends. It’s always fascinating to see how our local history runs alongside, intersects with or unites stories of people and places around the world.
The writer is a cultural documentarian and blogs at aturquoisecloud.wordpress.com
source: http://www.bangaloremirror.com / Bangalore Mirror / Home> Columns> Others / by Aliyeh Rizvi, Bangalore Mirror Bureau / June 26th, 2016
About 20 volunteers turned up at the hackathon on Sunday
Bengaluru :
An app that would help the visually impaired catch buses on their own was the highlight of a hackathon held in the city this weekend.
This was one of three hacks that 20 members of Random Hacks of Kindness (RoHK), a Bengaluru-based community, started working on Saturday. The team designing it hopes to help the visually impaired find bus stops, and identify buses that take them to their destination.
“Google Maps is only accurate up to 100 metres,” says 22-year-old engineer Yashaswi Bharadwaj, who is part of the team. “We are working on a code to help them find the exact location using a Bluetooth beacon. It should also have a text-to-voice and voice-to-text interface.”
The hack that he and his teammates come up with can be integrated with an existing source code. “We will also need data about the number of buses to a particular destination, the route numbers, and their expected time of arrival,” he said.
The second phase of the project would involve working on an image recognition system to inform users of the arrival of buses at their destination.
The theme of this edition of the hackathon — perhaps the 14th in the city and 20th in the country, according to RoHK managing trustee Chinmayi S K — was disability.
While the community gets together twice a year for two-day hackathons to work on tech-based solutions to various civic problems — including disaster management and gender-related issues — accessibility and disability have been recurring themes.
“Muthuraj, who works with the NGO Enable India, is here for most of our events,” says Chinmayi. “And we often partner with the organisation that works towards empowering the disabled.”
Yashaswi’s team is counting on the NGO’s cooperation to take the bus stop project forward. “We can’t integrate our hack with the BMTC app because we don’t have their source code,” he says. “But if Enable pitches it as one of their projects, the data will be made available.”
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Bengaluru / by Express News Service / June 20th, 2016
