Resource Centre@DA-IICT --> Current Awareness Services ::: ICT-WEB Alert

Introduction to Electronics, Signals, and Measurement

MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative has garnered favorable mentions from educators around the world since its inception several years ago, and new material is added to the site every semester. One recent addition to the site was this particular set of materials for an introductory course on electronics. Under the direction of Professors Manos Chaniotakis and David Cory, this course is designed as a “practical-hands on-introduction to electronics with a focus on measurement and signals.” Included on this site are a set of lecture notes, laboratory assignments, review notes, and practice exams. While students from around the world could definitely benefit from this material directly, educators could also peruse this material in an effort to gain some sense of how they might structure their own course.

Digital Mozart Museum

Since 1954, the International Mozarteum Foundation has been steadily editing the complete works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and their critical editions have become essential items for musicians and musicologists. This month, they placed the fruits of their collective labors online on this site, and it is truly a glorious achievement. Currently, there are 25,734 pages of music and 8,441 pages of commentary, and this number will increase in the future as more material is added. The Foundation’s future plans include placing its collection of autograph scores and original sources online as PDF files. Overall, the site is rather easy to use, and visitors should note that the site does receive a great deal of traffic at times, so it is best to also be patient if there’s a short delay in returning materials.

United Nations Environment Programme: The Billion Tree Campaign [pdf]

Painters and poets throughout the millennia have explored the aesthetic beauty of trees in great detail, and in the past few centuries, humans have become intimately aware of how trees form the foundation of many natural systems. Recently, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) launched their major worldwide tree planting campaign, “Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign”. One major component of their outreach efforts is this very fine website, which includes sections such as “Facts and Figures”, “Trees and Humanity”, and of course, “How to Plant a Tree”. On the site, visitors also have the option to pledge their support for the project in a variety of ways. The “Facts and Figures” section is also helpful, as it contains answers to a number of basic questions such as “Where are forests found?” and some more specific information on the importance of this project.

Internet as a Resource for News and Information about Science [pdf]

Americans get quite a bit of information from the Internet, and if recent surveys are any indication, they also seem to spend quite a bit of time browsing around the web as part of their day. This 42-page report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project released in November 2009 confirms that Americans also tend to use the Internet as a way to research various scientific subjects and related news items. The report was jointly conducted with the assistance of the San Francisco-based Exploratorium, and revealed that fully 40 million Americans use the Internet as their “primary source of news and information about science.” The report contains a number of other interesting findings, including the observation that 87% of online users have used the Internet to look up the meaning of a scientific concept, answer a specific science question, or check the accuracy of a scientific fact. The report will certainly be very useful to science educators and those concerned with information science and related topics.

Ask Philosophers

From time to time, all of us have wondered to ourselves any number of philosophical questions, ranging from “What is love?” to “How can we know what is true?” These are both very compelling questions, and most people probably would like to know a bit more about each one of these queries. Fortunately, the year 2005 saw the launch of this website, whose dictum is “You Ask. Philosophers answer.” Visitors can pose a question, and if it hasn’t been answered in detail already, one of the participating philosophers will respond in a few days with an answer. Visitors can also just browse through previously answered questions on the left-hand side of the homepage, where they will find categories that include animals, business, children, feminism, and rationality. Visitors can also learn a bit more about the site’s conception and purpose here, and they will be pleased to learn that there is a nice list of related sites offered, which includes links to the radio show, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Philosophy, complete with archives.

Virtual Labs [Shockwave]

Over the past few years, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Biointeractive website has garnered critical acclaim from a number of international organizations that evaluate various multimedia products that educate Internet users about science and technology. Most recently, their Virtual Labs area on the site has been well-received, and they are visually entrancing and easy to use. Currently, the site contains five full virtual labs, and they include those that allow students to learn how to identify various bacteria and another one that casts participants as a young intern who is learning how to identify heritable diseases of the heart. Each virtual lab contains resources for instructors, along with an interactive quiz

Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students [pdf]

Writing can be a formidable task, and at times, there can be few things more frightening than the emptiness of a blank page. The good people at the University of Vermont are aware of this fact, and this helpful website will be of use to both students and educators alike. The site is divided into sections that contain resources for students and instructors, and visitors will find the homepage easy to navigate. Some of the specific resources include short pieces on how to write for different audiences and how to design both presentation slides and scientific posters. After looking over these materials, visitors can also look at sample memos, letters, and resumes as well. Finally, the site is rounded out by several presentations that can be used by instructors in the classroom.

World Meteorological Organization

Founded in 1950, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is one of the oldest specialized agencies of the United Nations. With information available in Arabic, English, Spanish, French, and Russian, their website brings together information on weather, climate and water that will assist researchers and members of the pubic interested in meteorology and related fields. From their homepage, visitors can look over drop-down menus titled “Programmes” and “Topics”. While the “Programmes” area contains more specialized information, the “Topics” section contains links to thematic pages on over four dozen areas of interest from aerosols to women in meteorology. Of course, there’s plenty of information on weather conditions themselves, and visitors should move to the “Official Weather Forecasts and Warnings” area to be redirected to the WMO’s Severe Weather Information Centre which contains a real-time interactive map of the world. As an additional suggestion, visitors should take a look at their online art gallery, which contains an exhibit that features artistic impressions of different weather conditions from around the world.

Human Development Report 2009

Every year, many policy specialists and government officials eagerly await the annual Human Development Report issued by the United Nations Development Programme. Released in early November 2009, this year’s report was primarily focused on the issue of water, and they remarked that, “unclean water is an immeasurably greater threat to human security that violent conflict.” Within its 440 page, the report investigates the underlying causes and consequences of this crisis, along with arguing for “a concerted drive to achieve water and sanitation for all through national strategies and a global plan of action.” Along with significant appendices, the report also contains special contributions from President Jimmy Carter, Gordon Brown, and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

The Oxford Book of American Essays

Many a literary theorist and critic have wondered: “What is American literature?” Others have gone so far as to wonder whether such a thing can be defined and this area of academic inquiry has delighted many for several centuries. Late in the 19th century, one Brander Matthews was called upon to do just that-create an edited volume for the Oxford Press that would represent a variety of essays from different Americans of the time. All told, this volume published in 1914 contained 32 essays, including “John Bull” by Washington Irving, “Buds and Bird-Voices” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and “Dante by the Bowery” by Theodore Roosevelt. Other selections include inquisitive essays by Edgar Allen Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Walt Whitman. Thanks to the folks at bartleby.com, users can read each of these essays and decide for themselves if American literature can be defined.

Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865): Mathematical Papers

This collection consists of the mathematical papers of Sir William Rowan Hamilton published during his lifetime, transcribed and edited by David R. Wilkins. With one exception, these papers are available here in an edition based on the original published text. (The exception is the paper Remarques de M. Hamilton, Directeur de l'Observatoire de Dublin, sur un Mémoire de M. Plana inséré dans le Tome VII de la Correspondance Math.)

Most of the papers available here are also included in The Mathematical Papers of Sir William Rowan Hamilton, edited for the Royal Irish Academy and published by Cambridge University Press, which also published for the first time a number of papers, manuscripts and other material not available in this collection.

The Knowledge Bank at OSU

Within most major universities and colleges, a number of groups tend to work on various digitization projects. Some may be located with the library system, and others within specialized research institutes. The Ohio State University Knowledge Bank is working with a number of partners to create a knowledge management system that will support "the creation, organization, storage, dissemination and preservation of the institution’s digital information assets.” Even a casual glance at this website indicates that they are well underway in this endeavor, and there is, in many ways, something for everyone here. Visitors can begin exploring these materials by browsing through some of the collections by contributing organization, or by looking around by title, date, or author. Some of these materials include lectures and reports from the American Indian Studies department and an online archive of the Ohio Journal of Science

Joining the game

The Anil Ambani- controlled ADA group recently launched its online casual gaming portal www.zapak.com positioned as India’s largest online gaming catalogue which currently has over 150 casual games and plan to offer more than double of these by end 2009. Most games on offer will be exclusive to the portal, panning across single player and multi- player categories, as also across genres such as action, racing, puzzles, strategy, and sports. “With the world’s largest youth population, India as a market offers tremendous potential, “says Rajesh Sawhney, president, Reliance Entertainment Ltd. “ The gaming market is expected to grow to $200 million by 2010. Therefore, gaming is an important part of our entertainment strategy and we are investing @100 million in this venture over next three years.” The company said that it has set up operations of the portal on 100 servers which and support up to six million users. This is expected to rise to 1000 servers in the next three years. Recently the portal unveiled plans to add unique content such as the new ‘Zapak Tv’ feature, offering audio visual content including online game reviews, features on online gaming, news on the online gaming industry as well as contests. The gaming industry in the country is yet very small but growing well. Obviously, the portal would have the ‘first mover’ advantage.

For students and scholars

The ministry of human resource development recently launched http://sakshat.gov.in , a free portal aimed at nurturing talent and providing one-stop solution for addressing the needs of students, scholars and teachers. In addition, the portal designed, developed and implemented jointly by the National Informatics Centre and IBM- is aimed to promote flexibility for new learning methodologies, and help in standardising the accreditation process and training methods. In the first phase, the ministry has identified two application modules out of 40 core services for implementation including scholarship management, certification management, collaborative services and knowledge management. The first look at portal suggests that it is extremely information rich, with sections on scholarships, vocational courses, a database schools and colleges across India, syllabus of selected educational boards, e-books and e-journals, virtual class, audio-visual libraries, education helpline and student aid, among others. This coverage makes the portal appealing to learners ranging form the kindergarten to PhD levels. HRD is planning to work with the University Grants Commission, the Indira Gandhi National Open University to develop the world-class content.

Cool search engine

Selected by the Time magazine as a must-click website for its annual survey of the 50 Coolest Website of 2009, www.snap.com, is a search engine with a difference. The site provides users with an entirely new and more efficient way to view and interact with search results. Firstly, the site presents the search results in two columns- the left side lists a familiar text summary of each site and the right side displays the actual web page corresponding to each entry. The user can simply scroll through the list using the up and down arrow keys- much like surfing the channels of a television- to immediately see each search result. Users can then directly interact with the sites returned in the search result list without ever needing to leave the search engine. Secondly, this new search facility records and analyses past searches to help determine relevancy, favouring sites where surfers visited most frequently and lingered the longest. The moment a user types the first letter in the search box, a drop down menu appears instantly, offering popular search terms, synonyms, and other suggestions which enhance and speed up the search remains an important activity on the web, there will be scope for innovative newcomers.

Technology Pioneers

Technology Pioneers are companies from around the world that develop and apply the most innovative and transformational technologies in the fields of information technology, renewable energy, biotechnology and health. The work undertaken by these companies holds the promise of significantly affecting the way business and society operate. Each innovation is another step in society's attempt to harness, adapt and utilize technology to change and improve our world.

Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP)

The Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) is an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that aims to promote the development and application of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for sustainable human development in the Asia-Pacific region. It does so through three core programme areas, namely:
APDIP delivers on its objectives through activities that involve awareness raising and advocacy, building capacities, promoting ICT policies and dialogue, promoting equitable access to tools and technologies, knowledge sharing, and networking. Strategic public-private sector partnerships and opportunities for technical cooperation among developing countries (TCDC) are the key building blocks in implementing each programme activity.
For more, please see key UNDP documents on ICT for development

BOSS : Bharat Operating System Solutions

BOSS(Bharat Operating System Solutions) is a Linux distribution developed by C-DAC for enhancing the use of Free / Open Source Software in the country. Made specifically for the Indian environment , it consists of a pleasing Desktop environment coupled with Indian language support and other packages that are most relevant for use in the government domain. Subsequent versions will support the educational domain as well.

To know more about BOSS please see BOSS Wiki Pages Here you can have a look at BOSS screenshots and also contribute to BOSS documentation. Please feel free to express your views here.