Nabin K. Malakar, Ph.D.

NASA JPL
I am a computational physicist working on societal applications of machine-learning techniques.

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My research interests span multi-disciplinary fields involving Societal applications of Machine Learning, Decision-theoretic approach to automated Experimental Design, Bayesian statistical data analysis and signal processing.

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Interested about the picture? Autonomous experimental design allows us to answer the question of where to take the measurements. More about it is here...

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I addition to the research, I also like to hike, bike, read and play with water color.

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Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Clocking your Time-- Globally

Daylight saving is the practice of temporarily advancing clocks during the summertime so that afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less. Typically clocks are adjusted forward one hour near the start of spring and are adjusted backward in autumn.

The following video nicely explains all you need to know about the daylight savings time.


Back in the days, daylight saving time was thought as an innovative way to schedule people's work hours around the availability of the sun. The questions are "Does it really save the money?", and "Does it make people more productive, or rather less?" It has been highly debated (there goes ideas for few more correlation studies!).

Personally, for me, even though the DST says it is lunch time, my biological clock says it is otherwise. It takes time to get used to the DST changes, and that happens every time DST changes are made. In general, there might be people who are sleep deprived because of DST. To catch a sudden change is another pressure the body is subjected to, which might in turn increase the health related risks.
Thats why I think DST might not be effective in "saving" anything (cry out for more research!!).

Moreover, I would argue that in the age of internet, the whole idea of local time shall be removed. We all shall globally adopt the UTC. So, instead of referring to the local time and then going plus minus x hours for intercontinental communication/scheduling, one could simply refer to UTC. That means in USA east coast, a person who wakes up at about 7 AM will say, "I woke up at about 12PM (UTC) today". Everyone will adapt to the same clock, but will manage to sleep/work according to the local sunrise/sunset with reference to the UTC. It may sound weird to say that the sun will rise at 10PM (UTC) in USA east coast, or  12AM (UTC) in south asia, but it will be OK after some practice. We will all enter into the new year at the same time around the globe. Since UTC would be the only standard, it would be very simplified to, "meeting at 9PM"-- no need to worry about the country, place, or whatever. Simply pick your universal time!
You can see how complex it becomes for each region.
If UTC were to be the only time, one could say meet @ 6PM UTC! 

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Thursday, September 18, 2008

Give me enough time, I will impress you!

While I am feeling that I have little bit of spare time, I do watch the TED presentations. They are great!!!

One of the video I recently watched has impressed me. It is about the creation of universe and the on-going experiment to reveal the secrets of Nature.
The take home point was: If Hydrogen is given 14 billion years, it can create such a magnificent Universe.
I turned into myself and asked, wow!

Give me some time, I am sure that I will impress you!!!
Enjoy the presentation.