What is Information?

What is Information?
Is it the data that you collect? Is it the statement that your mother makes when advising not to go outside in the dark? Or is it what you think on what you know about what you are thinking?
Defining information is not so trivial.
Try it, feel free to share on comments.

Seaswarm: Autonomous Oil absorbing robot

When the Gulf oil spill occured, attempts were made to clean it manually. It required deploying thousands of workers and still only few percentage of the spill was collected.  The spill had very bad effects on the environment. Just google gulf oil spill in pictures.
Now researchers at MIT have come up with an autonomous robot to collect the oil from such spill. The video below shows how swarm of networked robots can be used to collect such spill.
The idea is nice because it does not need human intervention. Once left on the spill site, it can work spontaneously.



http://web.mit.edu/press/2010/seaswarm.html

Some Deep Sea Videos

I am left wordless...

Nepali Physics Students Departing from Nepal: Fall 2010.

This year about 25+-5 Nepali physics students departed aboard to pursue the PhD degree. There are more than 200 physicists aboard now!.
The name and university are listed below:

• Binod Manandhar- University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
• Santosh Sharma- University of Memphis, Tennessee
• Shreedhar Pant- Texas Christian University
• Navaraj subedi- Mississippi State University
• Kamal Chapagain- Western Illinois University
• Dipendra Adhikari- University of New Mexico, NM
• Tej Nath Lamichhane- University of Texas, Arlington
• Keshav Sapkota- Catholic University of America
• Bijaya Thapa - University of Utah
• Binod Rai- University of Memphis, Tennesse
• Kamal Dhakal- University of Rhode Island
• Disoj Neupane- New Mexico State University, NM
• Takat Rawal- University of Central Florida
• Raj Dahal- University of Memphis, Tennesse
• Keshav Shrestha- University of Houston, TX
• Nabaraj Sapkota- University of Utah
• Tara Acharya- University of Utah

Please let us know if you are missing on the list.

Thanks to Sanjiv G.

Previous:
http://www.nabinkm.com/2009/08/physics-students-departing-from-nepal.html
http://www.nabinkm.com/2008/08/physics-students-departing-from-nepal.html

Helmet Teachers and +2 Colleges in Nepal

In the recent edition of online Himalkhabar, there was a panel discussion on  "which kind of teachers are good". Of course, there was a recurring topic of "Helmet Teachers" as expressed by the participants.
"Helmet Teacher" (HT) in Kathmandu valley is the name given to the teachers who are the visiting teachers without full time commitment to the institution. Helmet teachers are basically invited to teach one or two classes. Since they usually have to cover many such campuses, they usually come in motor-bike (and thus with helmet in hand); teach and go.

Problems:
The bike Helmets can be lost in critical time, or traffic jam can prevent on-time arrival of such teachers.
Since HT are not fully responsible, the load shift from class to class can disrupt the learning environment. Even some of the time, the fulltime teachers may have to share the load for HT's absence.

Solutions:
10+2 should be obliged to hire certain number of full time committed faculties.
HSEB is now a very big institution. I wonder why it is still not going under hiring HSEB branded teachers. With proper training and HSEB affiliation, the quality of teacher can be assured (if there is any question on it).

The rest is out for discussion. One needs to note that planting the guilt into somebody does not solve the problem.
http://himalkhabar.com/news.php?id=3381