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Saturday, July 04, 2009

Sun Temple


Konark Sun Temple, situated in the eastern State of Orissa close to the holy city of Puri, is devoted to the sun God or Surya. It is an epic depiction of the sun God Surya's chariot; it has 24 wheels and it is decorated with emblematic designs and it is led by a side of six horses. It is a work of art of Orissa's medieval structural design and one of India's most famous Brahman sanctuaries.

The Konark temple is broadly known not only for its architectural greatness but also for the complexity and wealth of sculptural work. It marks the highest point of achievement of Kalinga architecture depicting the grace, the joy and the rhythm of life all its wondrous variety.

The temple declared a world heritage by UNESCO was built in A.D. 1250, during the reign of the Eastern Ganga King Narasimhadeva-I (A.D. 1238-64). There are two rows of 12 wheels on each side of the Konark sun temple. Some say the wheels represent the 24 hours in a day and others say the 12 months. The seven horses are said to symbolize the seven days of the week. Sailors once called this Sun Temple of Konarak, the Black Pagoda because it was supposed to draw ships into the shore and cause shipwrecks.

Friday, June 12, 2009

India's nocturnal bird

JERDON'S Courser is a nocturnal bird, inhabitant of Andhra Pradesh. The bird is critically endangered. It is the only prevalent bird to Andhra Pradesh. It has a big eye for night vision, a black crown, a yellow beak and orange throat patch and is found only in thin, scrubby areas with bushes between two and three meters in height. The call of the bird is – kwikkoooo.. kwikoooo..kwikkooooo...




At first Thomas C. Jerdon spotted this bird in 1848 but not seen again until 1986 when Bharat Bhushan, an ornithologist at the Bombay Natural History Society rediscovered the species that had been feared extinct. This courser is a restricted-range endemic found in India in the Eastern Ghats of Andhra Pradesh.

The construction of the Telugu-Ganga canal, around the border of the wildlife sanctuary was proposed. The proposed path of the canal threatened the sanctuary, conservationists including Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS, BirdLife in India) and RSPB (BirdLife in the UK) .They urged the Supreme Court of India to get involved. The Supreme Court stopped the construction work, and now, three years later on, a new route has been approved which avoids most of the protected sites.

Activities taken to protect the endangered species
To take on conservation research on the Jerdon's courser to find out inhabitants size and distribution and to spot out the current intimidation to the birds; to produce a management plan based on the study and monitoring; to offer training for BNHS and Forestry Department staff; to lift the profile of the Jerdon's course both at national and local levels.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Ekistics

The term Ekistics (coined by Konstantinos Apostolos Doxiadis in 1942) applies to the science of human settlements. It includes regional, city, community planning and dwelling design. It involves the study of all kinds of human settlements, with a view to geography and ecology - the physical environment- , and human psychology and anthropology, and cultural, political, and occasionally aesthetics.

As a scientific mode of study is currently found to rely on statistics and description, organized in five Ekistic Elements: Nature, Anthropos, Society, Shells, and Networks. It is generally a more academic field than "urban planning", and has considerable overlap with some of the less restrained fields of architectural theory.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Information Gathering Satellite

program. It was started as a response to the 1998 North Korean missile test over Japan. The satellite program's main mission is to provide early warning of impending hostile launches in the neighborhood. This programme is under direct control of the cabinet. However it should be noted, that Earth observation is a rather new field for Japan. The first Japanese mission in this field MOS-1 was launched only in 1987. For this reason Japan still lacks some technology in this field with a resolution of one meter.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Linear control

Linear control systems use linear negative feedback to produce a control signal mathematically based on other variables, with a view to maintaining the controlled process within an acceptable operating range.

The output from a linear control system into the controlled process may be in the form of a directly variable signal, such as a valve that may be 0 or 100% open or anywhere in between. Sometimes this is not feasible and so, after calculating the current required corrective signal, a linear control system may repeatedly switch an actuator, such as a pump, motor or heater, fully on and then fully off again, regulating the duty cycle using pulse-width modulation.

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Complex adaptive systems

Complex adaptive systems are special cases of complex systems. They are complex in that they are diverse and made up of multiple interconnected elements and adaptive in that they have the capacity to change and learn from experience. The term complex adaptive systems was coined at the interdisciplinary Santa Fe Institute (SFI), by John H. Holland, Murray Gell-Mann and others.

CAS ideas and models are essentially evolutionary, and they take ground in the modern biological views on adaptation and evolution. Accordingly, the theory of complex adaptive systems bridges developments of the system theory with the ideas of 'generalized Darwinism', which suggests that Darwinian principles of evolution are capable to explain a range of complex material phenomena, from cosmic to social objects.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Marxism

Marxism is both the theory and the political practice (that is, the praxis) derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Any political practice or theory that is based on an interpretation of the works of Marx and Engels may be called Marxism; this includes different forms of politics and thought such as those of Communist Parties and Communist states, as well as academic research across many fields. And while there are many theoretical and practical differences among the various forms of Marxism, most forms of Marxism share:

• an attention to the material conditions of people's lives, and social relations among people
• a belief that people's consciousness of the conditions of their lives reflects these material conditions and relations
• an understanding of class in terms of differing relations of production, and as a particular position within such relations
• an understanding of material conditions and social relations as historically malleable
• a view of history according to which class struggle, the evolving conflict between classes with opposing interests, structures each historical period and drives historical change
• a sympathy for the working class or proletariat
• and a belief that the ultimate interests of workers best match those of humanity in general.