Ten most viewed notes in 2012

Wishing you a happy
New Year 2013!!

Posts (nabinkm.com)

Entry	Pageviews
Solution to "Newton's Math Problem" by Shouryya Ra... May 30, 2012, 2 comments	10530
List of Nepali Physicists Aboard: Reloaded Apr 8, 2009, 3 comments	9471
शुक्रलाई ताकेर सूर्यलाई हेर्ने :) Jun 6, 2012	5824
बादल छैन परदेशीलाई Dec 16, 2012, 1 comment	2189
Color-coded boarding scheme Dec 23, 2011	1708
My Favorite Ten Nepali Blog posts Aug 7, 2010, 18 comments	1065
Gmail Captcha Broken by Spammers! Feb 27, 2008, 4 comments	1055
A Google Widget for Nepali Bloggers Jun 1, 2009, 20 comments	840
Nepalese Physicists departing from Nepal for Fall ... Jul 13, 2012, 11 comments	634
Physics Students Departing from Nepal to USA for F... Aug 5, 2008, 4 comments	592

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Posts (ajabgajab)

Entry	Pageviews
Personal Helicopter: No Robots on Board... Dec 1, 2009, 3 comments	3006
Nepali Fonts in Android: install read and type May 14, 2012, 1 comment	2572
Nepali Fonts for Android displays Box... SOLVED! Aug 27, 2010, 6 comments	2226
Scam: Free $500 Costco Cash Voucher ... Sep 28, 2012	914
Buddhisagar Karnali Blues Sep 12, 2010	797
Posting on Facebook? Think once May 13, 2010	782
Type in Nepali : Unicode Nepali Converter Dec 1, 2008, 5 comments	738
My 100th Post!!! Jan 12, 2008, 4 comments	592
Watch BatMan The Dark Knight Free!!! Jul 20, 2008	590
A Giant leap for Nepali Photo Journalism May 16, 2008, 3 comments	423

Wild Fire in Langtang National Park detected from Space

DHUNCHE: A massive wild fire spread across Rasuwa’s northern Timure and the surrounding forest of Langtang area this morning. The inferno in Langtang National Park area was reported after a huge cloud of smoke was seen from the headquarters at around 10:00 am. According to locals, they first suspected a volcano eruption but they did not hear any explosive sound. As the incident site is far from human settlement, people are safe, said District Police Office. The incident site is a three-day walk from the district headquarters. A Nepali Army chopper, which had reached the site at 1:00 pm, is learned to have returned without learning about the cause of the fire.

That was the news. Source: http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Fire+engulfs+Langtang+National+Park+area&NewsID=358587

The NASA remote sensing observation satellites called Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer  (MODIS) detected fire activities in the area. Attached is the screenshot.

NASA MODIS detection of recent wildfires in Nepal. This is an example of how useful the remote sensing observation can be for mountainous country like Nepal. The helicopter observation could not tell whether it was fire or volcano. Twitter was filled with the news of volcano/not volcano discussions.  I believe one of the ministry (of environment) should be enrolled to NASA fire updates so that they can get alerts for such incidents.

More about the tools:
The Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) integrates remote sensing and GIS technologies to deliver global MODIS fire locations and burned area information. The active fire locations are processed by LANCE using the standard MODIS MOD14/MYD14 Fire and Thermal Anomalies product. Each active fire location represents the center of a 1km pixel that is flagged by the algorithm as containing one or more fires within the pixel.
http://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/firemap/

If someone is concerned about the fire in any particular location, they also provide email subscription alerts. I think someone in environment ministry should be interested. Just wanted to point out the tools that may help the decision makers.

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बादल छैन परदेशीलाई

गाउँमा वदली हुँदा मेरी आमा आकाश तिर हेरेर, 

धारे हात लाउँदै "अब कुन पाखा लान्छस् ?" भनेर बिच्कन्थे । 

खोला साँध परेको खेत, आधा बगेर पारीपट्टी चरन भएको थियो ।

नत पारीकाले दाबी गर्न सके नत हाम्रो हक लाग्यो !

म भने बादल हेरेर खुब रमाउँथे 

बादलले लिने आकार हेरेर दंग पर्थें र 

बादलको हात्ति चढेर कल्पनाको संसारमा डुबीरहन्थे।

"यो मोरा कति ट्वाल्ल परेर बस्न सक्छ?"

"बादल हेर्ने मान्छे हुस्सु हुन्छ "

मैले बादल हेर्न छोडीन।  मेरो घैटोमा घाम लागेन।

आज म बर्षैभरि घाम लाग्ने ठाउँमा छु 

तर यहाँ बदलि हुन्न। निलो आकाशतिर टोलाउँछु केवल रिक्तता पाउँछु ।

मानिसले मानिसलाई मानिस नगन्ने यो मरुभूमिमा  

आकार बुन्ने र सपना देख्ने मेरो सहारा, बादल, कतै भेटिन्न ।

सपनाको देशमा आएपछि,  सपना बुन्ने मेरो क्षमता टुटेको छ ।

Mom, I miss you :'(

"बादल छैन परदेशीलाई"

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"Pale Blue Dot"- Carl Sagan

“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.” 
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g

The background behind the story:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot

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Attending #CIDU2012 in Boulder Colorado

I am currently attending Conference on Intelligent Data Understanding (CIDU) here in Boulder.
The conference theme for this year is "Bringing Data and Models Together". The presentations consist of scientists from a wide variety of fields: Space Science, Earth and Environment Systems, and Aerospace and Engineering Systems. This is a great conference bringing researchers practicing data mining, machine learning or computational intelligence.
I am enjoying all the talks. The final agenda for CIDU 2012 can be found  here.

This is the first time that the CIDU is being held in NCAR, Boulder, away from its "home".

I presented yesterday. First day first slot: nice!!
It was about "Estimation and Bias Correction of  Aerosol Abundance using  Data driven Machine Learning and Remote Sensing ". Basically this paper discusses a general framework to choosing the optimal set of variables for machine learning/bias correction. Neural network was used, however one can insert his/her favorite Machine learning tool (SVM, DT, RF, GP etc). This involves massive number crunching for brute force search among all possible combination of variables. For 15 variable case, it has more than 32 thousands of combinations to try. I wonder if Bayes Net can help me to intelligently reduce the search.

Forgot my SD card, and it is cloudy+started to snow. While driving down the road, I saw nice mountains!! However, no pictures on this post!
(Happy Dashain!!)
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Hack Kinect to automate map making

In the video Maurice Fallon, an MIT researcher, describe a wearable sensor system that automatically creates a digital map of the environment through which the wearer is moving.
Using LIDAR, MS Kinect, IMU (battery), the user gathers the data which is processed on the fly on a base (computer) and a 2D map is built in real time.
This could be very useful in disaster response zone.

--> Read more:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/automatic-building-mapping-0924.html

#WinkAtTheMoon for Neil Armstrong!

There is a Blue Moon today, coinciding with a private family memorial service for Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. In honor of Neil, NASA’s asking that you share publicly your photos of the moon tonight on Google+ and tag them with the hashtag #WinkAtTheMoon .
NASA will repost a gallery on the +NASA page of some of our favorite photos.

After Neil’s passing, his family stated: “For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.”

From... https://plus.google.com/u/0/102371865054310418159/posts/MkFPThjWsiP

Curiosity @ Mars #msl

Curiosity will be landing on Mars this week.
You can follow it @MarsCuriosity
We wish the curiosity rover a nice journey and (√) a smooth landing.


The mission will take about 8 months to reach Mars.
Lets start with a minute video.



Here is the animation of landing to the red planet.


The process on the ground


For updates follow http://twitter.com/#!/MarsCuriosity
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html

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Statistical Physics of Human Mobility: Paper

Statistical physics help understand relating the microscopic properties of atoms and molecules to the macroscopic properties of materials that can be observed in everyday life. As a result, it is able to explain thermodynamics as a natural result of statistics, classical mechanics, and quantum mechanics at the microscopic level. [1]

By looking into the GPS information, from vehicles (collected) in Italy, Gallotti et al have performed a study to apply ideas of statistical physics to describe the properties of human mobility.

The human mobility is an interesting research question. Understanding of human mobility can be useful in urban planning, and to understand spread of epidemic. In addition, the authors suggest that such studies may also be useful to discover possible "laws" that can be related to the dynamical cognitive features of individuals.

The average speed variance (on the left), the distribution (on the right) can be decomposed as a mixture of Gaussian. Two Gaussians with mean speed of around 20 Km/hr and 45 Km/hr emerges. This indicates the distinct behavior of drivers. I find this to be an interesting decomposition.

The left figure shows the statistical distribution of the activity time. The presence of straight line indicates Benford's law. Figure on the right shows "total activity time". With the help of the "down time" i.e. the period for which the GPS is turned off, the authors suggest that at least three distinct peaks for full-time (~9 hrs), part-time (~4 hrs) jobs and night rest (~13 hrs). However, there is also one more peak around 1hr downtime. I guess the down-time for one hour peak shows short-term activities such as shopping behavior.

In the paper, using the travel time as a cost function, the authors show that the distribution between successive trips are indeed driven by an underlying Benford's law. The ranking of the the distribution of the average visitaion frequency may also help to understand how people organize their daily agenda. An interesting feature comes out when the average speed distribution for the recorded trip is decomposed as a mixture of two Gaussians: one with ≤ 5km. I think such characteristics distribution indicate the local constraint on the movements. Obviously, the motion is not free of constraints. The mobility data is strictly constrained by the road structures.
It would be interesting to see if there are such statistical phenomena as "phase transition" in such statistical law of human mobility.
This is an interesting paper. See [2].


At last, Why do we move from one place to another?
If we assume some aggregate effect on social scale; are we different than the gas molecules contained in a box? Moreover, it seems someone has to drive an extra mile since the system demands it!

References:
(Special thanks to Prof. Armando Bazzani for allowing me to use the figures.)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_physics
[2] Towards a Statistical Physics of Human Mobility
Riccardo Gallotti, Armando Bazzani, Sandro Rambaldi
http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.5698

Google Science Fair Grand Prize goes to Brittany Wenger, 17 For Neural Network based Breast Cancer Diagnosis App Project

The second Google Science Fair Grand Prize goes to Brittany Wenger, 17 For Neural Network based Breast Cancer Diagnosis App Project.
Her project title is:
"Global Neural Network Cloud Service for Breast Cancer"
It is quite a nice idea of enabling cloud-based diagnostics. Read the details in the project page.

In addition, we would also like to congratulate all the finalists for their efforts!
http://www.google.com/intl/en/events/sciencefair/finalists.html


Summary - Science Fair 2012: 

Nepalese Physicists departing from Nepal for Fall 2012

I am sure a lot of people are missing from the list. However, thanks to Narayan G, we have compiled this list for the moment. Please let me know, I will update it.
Thanks!

We would like to wish all the best to the physicists for their success. Please join the Google Group of Nepal Physical Society for lively discussions. We have also created a Google Map showing Nepali Physicists around the globe. If you know someone who is missing from the map, please let us know.
http://goo.gl/maps/wU13
1 Basu Ram Lamichane University of Missouri Science and Technology
2 Bikas Kafle University of Memphis
3 Chet Raj Bhatta Mississippi State University
4 Chinta Mani Aryal University of Akron
5 Deepak Sapkota University of Tennessee
6 Dinesh Thapa University of Idaho
7 Dipendra Adhikari University of Memphis
8 Dipendra Dahal CUNY, New York
9 Durga Raj Siwakoti Mississippi State University
10 Ebin Bastola Bowling Green State University
11 Ganga Prasad Sharma University of Rhode Island
12 Ghadendra B. Bhandari Bowling Green State University
13 Gyanendra Bohara North Texas
14 Indra Mani Ghimire Baylor University
15 Jiwan Katwal University of Houston
16 Kiran Ghimire
17 Kushal Shrestha
18 Lokendra Poudel University of Missouri
19 Medani P. Sangraula Illinois Institute of Technology
20 Min Prasad Khanal Auburn University
21 Mohan Panta University of Houston
22 Nabin Thapa Kent State University
23 Nabina Paudyal Akron University of Ohio
24 Narayan Poudel University of Houston
25 Nawa Raj Dahal Boston College
26 Pauf Neupane Missouri Science and Technology
27 Pawan Pathak University of Naveda
28 Prabodh Dhakal Washington State University
29 Pradip Raj Niraula University of Massachusetts
30 Prakash Upreti Bowling Green State University
31 Rabi Khanal Missouri University of Science and Technology
32 Rajiv Kadel Iowa State University
33 Rishi Ram Paudel University of Delaware
34 Rudra Prasad Pokhrel University of Wyoming
35 Sagar Prasad Paudel Wyane State University
36 Samana Shrestha University of Rhode Island
37 Shanker Aryal University of Southern Illinios
38 Shiva Shran Bhandari Michigan Technology University
39 Sudip Nepal Arkansas University
40 Surendra Maharjan University of Houston
41 Umesh Silwal Mississippi State University
42 Upendra Rijal Bowling Green State University
43 Vijay Khanal University of Naveda
44 Yagya Raj Joshi Florida International

Thanks to Narayan Poudel, Yuba Raj Poudel, Samana Shrestha and others.

Questions You Wanted to Ask About Physics Graduate School (But Were Afraid to Ask!)

A nice webinar presented by Graduate students and post docs.
 Discusses important issues:

• Grad School application process (tests and how early should one plan)
• Financial support
• Required course work, and qualifying exams
• About research and advising etc

 

Cracking the World's hardest Sudoku

I heard about the claim that this one is the hardest sudoku puzzle made to date. Obviously I wanted to solve it. But since I am pressed with time this moment, I solved it using Google's Goggles. :)

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Rock paper scissors, wait there is more...

You can win the game (or battle) with few methods: with intelligence/tactics, and/or with speed (assuming equally powerful players).
The field of Machine learning can use both! :)
So, fasten your seatbelt and think!
Recently I saw a video showing robot system with 100% winning rate "as one example of human-machine cooperation systems". The key was the speed. http://www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/fusion/Janken/index-e.html

On the lighter note to the post, because of limited outcomes of the Rock-paper-scissors, there might be draws. So there is more to the game, if you are willing to add the options. As BBT suggests: "Rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock".