praveen Thursday, 22nd of April 2010 at 06:28:34 AM
April 22nd reminds us of one important job that we have been neglecting from the time human race started his industrial revolution. This day is celebrated as the “Earth Day” all over the globe. “Earth Day” was started in the year 1970 and is being celebrated till date. Analysis shows that our planet is getting hotter and hotter each passing year. Yes, there are talks being held among the nations to reduce the effect of global warming but, the results are not promising enough. Everyone just wants to get on to the top spot.
Let us all join hands in saving our only hope of survival and step forward to save our planet. Even a small thing like switching off a fan when not in use, planting a tree in our surrounding, switching off the vehicle engine in the signal lights can makes lot of difference. So, lets roll up our sleeves to do our bit , which can make a huge impact on the environment. Each of our efforts put together can make wonders and have great impact on our Mother Earth like little drops of water makes the mighty ocean.
Lets join our hands together to save the only Blue planet in this universe, she’s our only hope..
It was one of my dream and passion, to walk in the forest and see the wild animals roaming freely in their natural habitat. This dream came true when I got selected by WCS(Wildlife Conservation Society) to assist them in the annual line transect survey at Bandipur Tiger Reserve.
Line transect survey is similar to human census but, only difference being that here, wild animals will be counted in the forest range that they live in. The total prey count is taken to calculate the predator count using a unique mathematical formula. To perform this survey, complete reserve forest area is classified and marked with number of unique sections. Each of this section is called a “line” whose length will be between 2-3 km. A marked line can be in shape of a ‘triangle’ or ‘rectangle’ so as to make the start and end points the same(this will help in drop and pickup). A compass and a range finder is provided to note down the angle of the animal seen and distance at which the animal is sighted respectively. Along with this line transect survey various other surveys like:
Scat route survey (to get a count of carnivorous)
Human conflict survey (to check the human conflict with the nature in and around the Tiger reserve and national parks)
Camera trapping (to get the count of carnivorous, specifically tigers) is being carried out in all the national parks and tiger reserve all over India.
I had been to this line transect survey for a period of one week. And it was one of the best thing happened in my life. Got to see many of the wildlife species lurking about freely in the wild.
A person needs good amount of skill to walk in the forest without making much noise along with a fare amount of knowledge about the wild species living in that geographical and fare amount of luck to see some of the wild species like the bear, tiger, leopard etc.. I think I had my part of luck as, I could watch many of these magnificent species at a very close range.
We were around 15 people and many of them had come all the way from Pune, MP etc.. This shows the amount of interest shown by them to participate in these events. Everyone used to walk in their assigned lines each day.
First walk will be in the morning 06:15 hrs to 8:15 hrs and later, the evening walk would extend from 16:00 hrs to 18:00 hrs.
To learn more about the transect survey, please watch this videos:
After completing the successful week in the line transect survey, we got a opportunity to visit one of the zoo. What we saw there was totally disturbing.. Few wild animals who need a area of 100 sq.km to survive was concealed in 20*20 cage.. and many animals which live in social harmony were alone.. We just couldn’t take this bitter truth and we just walked out of the zoo.. When questioned, many said “we need people to get right information about the wild animals and there behavior” and few say “ its one of the major source of attraction for tourist”.. Should this speechless animals suffer for the benefit of human race..? we, humans are yet to answer this question.
praveen Thursday, 25th of March 2010 at 03:20:26 AM
Bangalore is grappling with heat and lack of power as the government scrambles to fill up the shortfall. Still electricity and more broadly energy is the privilege of few who live in urban India. We at Injoos are participating again the upcoming chapter of Earth Hour. A Global initiative to make people aware of the challenges of energy shortage and the need for conservation.
On March 27th 2010, 20:30 to 21:30 local time will be celebrated as Earth Hour. Lets join hands in this cause and switch off all the lights during this hour. Lets joins hands to this cause and save our planet Earth from rapid climate change, De-forestation, Pollution etc..
Earth and Wildlife do not vote. Lets raise OUR voices, so that THEY are heard.
Jagdish Sunday, 28th of February 2010 at 04:00:20 PM
While I write this blog post the serviceman came and took away the faulty Inverter from my home in Bangalore, the silicon alley of India. In this hitech city there are constant power cuts and in this month it has gone up to 4 Hours a day. The UPS with battery sells like hot cakes so that affluent home owners can get their fans running when the local utility BESCOM stops the power supply. Large IT companies use highly polluting and energy inefficient generator sets, guzzling huge amounts of fuel. I wish I could get off the public power grid and generate my own power and live happily ever after. That is still a pipe dream as the current technologies using clean energy sources like Solar and Bio are very expensive and also very inefficient.
When I saw the press release of BloomEnergy, a new Silicon Valley startup whose CEO Sridhar, an emigrant from India indicated that with his new Solid Fuel cell technology his Bloom boxes will help us get off that grid. The first customer trying his boxes is Google who has been using it for the last 18 months to power one of its data centers. So what is this new technology? How is it different?
Solid fuel cells have been used for a long time now in various space technologies by organizations like NASA, the difference being that this time around the technology does not use expensive metals or corrosive liquids but inexpensive sand. Yes, sand gets transformed into a ceramic sheet which gets coated and becomes the core of the solid fuel cell. The bloom box which is of the size of a refrigerator could power up to four houses in Bangalore.
One of the analogies I liked is bloom boxes could do what Laptops did to large computers and mobile phone did to landline phones. Literally make you self sufficient.
Watch this video as Sridhar demonstrates the use of his technology and the companies which are trying it out.
The technology is yet to be commercialized and I am hoping that Sridhar and team will be able to keep the costs down to the level people in Asian countries will be able to afford it.
Thursday, 22nd of April 2010 at 06:28:34 AM
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