Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

'The Davos Question': A 6-minute video re Auroville, by Aryadeep

ronjon — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:55:28 -0800

I recommend watching this video. Imo, it's a good example of the spirit and vision shared by many Aurovilians. ~ ronjon

A 6.37 minute video pointing out the potentiality of Auroville Universal Township, especially of the International Zone, as a new kind of United Nations, has been posted by way of answer to [the]Davos Question on the You Tube, thanks to timely intimation from Jack Alexander, a former Aurovilian and a close friend of Auroville from USA.

Link to the video:

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

The highest videos will be shown and discussed at the World Economic Forum starting from 23^rd January. ...

Karan Singh says "Pavilion of India has an active role to play in Auroville activities"

ronjon — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:42:40 -0700

Chairman of the Governing Board of the Auroville Foundation Karan Singh said on Sunday that the Pavilion of India had an active role to play in cultural and integration activities of Auroville.

Speaking after performing the ‘bhoomi pooja’ for a housing complex and Swagatham, a VIP guest house, Dr. Karan Singh said there were many groups working towards their goals and they could work on various topics.

He said there was a very high concentration of creativity in Auroville and added that the residents were pursuing a collective yoga. “People of different religions, castes, creeds and communities are living together. There will be some inter-personal conflicts in such a situation but they have to live and work together to create a sense of community.” ...

Pitroda calls for 1,000 community radio stations in a year

ronjon — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:07:09 -0700

Chairman of the National Knowledge Commission Sam Pitroda has called for at least 1,000 community radio stations to be set up in the country in a year's time. -- In a video message to participants at a media workshop in Auroville here, Pitroda also called for greater awareness of radio's usefulness.

Expressing concern over the ban on news and current events under India's radio policy, Pitroda said he believed that "the community radio can fulfil its objectives to facilitate exchange and bring out more information on events of local importance". -- He emphasised the "need for accessible and affordable technology to enable a larger number of CR (community radio) stations".

Is community radio working in India? Not really, if participants at the workshop are to be heard. -- It is much easier to get a commercial license for an FM station than a license for community radio, activists said at a two-day workshop here, pointing out that India's current radio regulation is heavily tilted against community radio.

Clean air or TV: Where will Asia find more energy?

ronjon — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 14:50:41 -0800

A toxic purple haze of diesel exhaust hangs over the rice and jute fields here in northeastern India, and bird songs are frequently drowned out by the chug-a-chug-a-chug of diesel generators. — Across the developing world, cheap diesel generators from China have become a favorite way to provide electricity. — They power everything from irrigation pumps to television sets, allowing growing numbers of rural villages in many poor countries to grow more crops and connect to the wider world. — But as the demand increases for the electricity that makes those advances possible, it is often being met through the dirtiest, most inefficient means, creating pollution in many remote areas that used to have pristine air and negligible emissions of carbon dioxide and other global warming gases...

Another popular approach being tried in India and elsewhere -- using solar energy to recharge lanterns by day -- has run into difficulty even as diesel prices would seem to make it more competitive. — The problem is that prices for photovoltaic panels for solar energy have surged as governments in industrialized countries, especially Germany, have encouraged greater use of renewable energy, said Hemant Lamba, the coordinator of Aurore, a renewable energy service company in Auroville, India. — "It's harder to do any solar energy projects in India," he said. ...

Biovillage approach represents the greening of development

ronjon — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 14:14:15 -0800

Selvi Alagappan rises early each day to tend to her small patch of crossandra and jasmine flowers in the rural Indian village of Mangalam, in the Union of Pondicherry. These and the mushrooms she cultivates in a nearby shack bring in a monthly income that, while still below the poverty line, keeps her large family from going hungry. — Two years ago, however, starvation was very much a reality for Selvi and her family. But like many other participants of the Biovillage Project, a collaborative development programme described by its authors as "pro-nature, pro-women, pro-poor", Selvi was given the tools and technical assistance to increase her household income and get her back on her feet again.

The project is run by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, a local non-governmental organization in Chennai, with funding and technical assistance from the Government of India and international agencies including FAO, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The project began in 1992 with 42 participants in three villages. It now operates in 19 villages with a team of 24 project specialists. ...

Yamaha Divide: Foldable Electric Bike

ronjon — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 17:54:18 -0800

...Being hyped as both an Object d’ Art for your home (it folds in half at the press of a button) and zippy commuter (uses an electric ‘smart power’ motor, based on something called the Passol motor unit). Free of petrol and oil apparently. Die-cast aluminium provides the curves and a Lithium-ion battery feeds the “permanent magnet synchronous motor“. ...

Hanging Homes: Free Spirit Spheres, Habitat for the Un-Tamed Spirit

ronjon — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 17:33:42 -0800

Imagine a cluster of these hanging at Auroville! ...

Uses for these durable Spheres are limited only by ones imagination. Healing, meditation, photography, canopy research, leisure and game watching are just some of the things you could do.

Spheres can be hung from the trees as shown or from any other solid objects like buildings or rock faces. A web of rope is connected to any strong points available. This replaces the foundation of a conventional building. A suspended tree house uses the forest for its foundation. The occupants have a vested interest in the health of the grove. The supporting web also mirrors our connectedness to our surroundings. Each sphere has four attachments on top and another four anchor points on the bottom. Each attachment is strong enough to carry the entire sphere and contents. ...

Auroville entrepreneurs: Use Segway Personal Transporters for AV tours?

ronjon — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 12:54:38 -0800

Here's an interesting article on how "Segway in Paradise," a company in Pittsburgh, PA [USA], is very successfully using Segway PTs (Personal Transporters) for tours around town. Perhaps these could be used for tours around Auroville? Are any AV entrepreneurs listening? ...

Nobel Winner Muhammad Yunus Warns of Dangers of Globalization

ronjon — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 13:46:16 -0800

The Bangladeshi banker Muhammad Yunus, who invented the practice of making small, unsecured loans to the poor, warned today that the globalized economy was becoming a dangerous “free-for-all highway.
“Its lanes will be taken over by the giant trucks from powerful economies,” Dr. Yunus said during a lavish ceremony at which he was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. “Bangladeshi rickshaws will be thrown off the highway.”
While international companies motivated by profit may be crucial in addressing global poverty, he said, nations must also cultivate grassroots enterprises and the human impulse to do good. ...

Spectrolab raises solar PV efficiency to 40.7 percent

ronjon — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 12:46:19 -0800

A team of engineers at solar cell manufacturer Spectrolab has produced a photovoltaic system with a record-breaking conversion efficiency of 40.7 per cent.
The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory has verified the milestone, which should help III-V semiconductor technology to increase its penetration of the market for terrestrial solar power systems.
Spectrolab CEO David Lillington hailed the achievement, and said that once the high-efficiency cells were qualified, they could be manufactured in very high volumes with little impact on production flow. ...

"Ecology and Auroville’s Development Planning," by Rod Hemsell

ronjon — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 15:05:11 -0800

... India’s current level of consumption (ecological footprint) is .8 gha (global hectares per capita) - already double India’s biocapacity of .4 gha, although it is significantly below humanity’s consumption level of 2.2 gha, which is 25% above the planet’s biocapacity of 1.18 gha. At India’s current level of exponential economic growth (7.5%) and population growth (1.7%), its economy will quadruple and its population will double by 2050. If Auroville doesn’t take this situation seriously and manifest a viable alternative infrastructure and economy that works, its real reason for existing, along with humanity’s as a whole, may never be realized. ...

Inc. Magazine introduces "The Green 50 - Do Good, Get Rich: The Eco-Advantage"

ronjon — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 12:45:25 -0800

Introducing the Green 50, a collection of entrepreneurial companies that are showing what it means to run good businesses, attack the most pressing problems of our time--and make serious cash along the way. ...

"Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century" ('Business Week' review)

ronjon — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 16:48:52 -0700

Ok, this review convinced me. I'm going to order my own copy of this new book, created by Alex Steffen, the executive editor of the amazingly informative website "Worldchanging.com," which Rich alerted us to in a recent post to SCIY. ~ ron

...Part encyclopedia of socially conscious companies and movements, part picture-book (it includes gorgeous color photographs by leading photographers such as Edward Burtynsky), and part how-to instructions on becoming a greener consumer or business, the nearly 600-page volume is an invaluable resource you can use without booting up your computer... And to justify the dead trees required to produce the tome—and set a compelling example for readers—publisher Harry N. Abrams printed each copy on 100% recycled, chlorine-free paper. Abrams also purchased wind credits (from www.renewablechoice.com) equal to the amount of electricity needed to manufacture the book.

"The Good Life: New Public Spaces of Recreation": Van Alen Institute exhibition, NYC

ronjon — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 16:15:47 -0700

I wonder if Auroville's planners are keeping up with the immensely creative work on urban design now underway around the world?

New York’s Van Alen Institute['s] The Good Life: New Public Spaces of Recreation, an exhibition at Hudson River Park’s Pier 40 showcasing dozens of projects either planned, under construction, or already realized that insert the rare combination of scenic refuge and pure pleasure into the hurly-burly of cities. “People are just desperate for these sites,” senior curator Zoë Ryan says. “Not everyone can escape the city during the summer, so this sort of destination has become increasingly important.” ...

SunPower announces 22% efficient solar panels

ronjon — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 12:51:36 -0700

Silicon Valley-based SunPower Corporation is looking to add a bit more juice to your rooftop, announcing its highest power and most efficient solar panel to date. The SPR-315 solar panel is based on the company's brand spankin' new Gen 2 solar cells, which have a rated power output of 315 watts and boast 22 percent photovoltaic (PV) efficiency -- that's opposed to the 7% to 17% common in most commercial PV systems. ...

The WindHunter Maritime Hydrogen Generation System

ronjon — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 12:24:32 -0700

The WINDHUNTER SYSTEM concept is an offshore, floating system that uses several wind turbines for power output to produce hydrogen by electrolyzing water. This continuously manned, safe and stable system will be easily maintained on-board while relocating to the best wind conditions for the wind turbines. The produced hydrogen gas may be compressed and stored as gas or liquefied and placed in insulated tanks. The compressed gas or tanks of liquefied gas may be transferred by helicopter or surface ships with insulated containers. ...

Evader Electric Motor Scooters and Mopeds

ronjon — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 17:36:59 -0700

Could this be an option for quiet, non-polluting transportation for Auroville?

EPIC Technology – Electric Propulsion by Intelligent Control – uses Evader’s propriety technology and programming to create an ideal combination of performance and safety. -- Evader’s EPIC technology encompasses the design, motor, controller (patent pending), Hyper Drive and all safety components. Evader owns the world rights to manufacture and market their patented technology in all their electric vehicles. -- Evader’s cutting-edge technology is incorporated in all 2006 products giving the company a technological advantage over the competition. It offers unparalleled performance and sets Evader apart from all other electric motor scooters. -- Evader plans to incorporate its technology into electric motor scooters, motorcycles, ATVs, and other electric vehicles. ...

Libya signs up for "One Laptop per Child." Will provide 1.2 million laptops for its students

ronjon — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 15:44:44 -0700

The fifth developing country has signed up for MIT's "One Laptop per Child" program. This is the open-source project that India recently opted out of, reportedly because of fears of losing control of the education of their children.

The government of Libya is reported to have agreed to provide its 1.2m school children with a cheap durable laptop computer by June 2008. -- The laptops offer internet access and are powered by a wind-up crank. They cost $100 and manufacturing begins next year, says [the non-profit organization located at MIT's Media Lab] One Laptop per Child. -- The non-profit association's chairman, Nicholas Negroponte, said the deal was reached on Tuesday in Libya.

The Long Zoom: Simulating the cosmos (NYT Magazine)

ronjon — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:54:19 -0700

...a decade or two from now, when we look back at this period, it is more likely that the work that will fix the long zoom in the popular imagination will be neither a movie nor a book nor anything associated with the cultural products that dominated the 20th century. It will be a computer game. ...

Magenn Power Inc. - Innovative lighter-than-air wind turbines

ronjon — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 11:17:58 -0700

I wonder if this new floating-in-air wind turbine would work as renewable electricity for Auroville and India?

The Magenn Power Air Rotor System (MARS) is an innovative lighter-than-air tethered device that rotates about a horizontal axis in response to wind, efficiently generating clean renewable electrical energy at a lower cost than all competing systems. ...

Forget Computers. Here Comes the Sun; Chip Entrepreneur Makes Solar Power Grow

ronjon — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 18:35:16 -0700

After years of promise, the market for [PV] solar power is finally taking off, with annual demand expected to increase to as much as 2,500 megawatts by the end of 2008, from about 1,000 megawatts now (which is the size of a large nuclear power plant). -- While most of the industry has a conversion efficiency of around 14 percent, the SunPower photovoltaic cell will reach 21 percent, a 50 percent advantage that translates into both cost and performance leads for the company. [It] will need that performance, because increasing demand will lead to more efficient solar cells from larger competitors like the Japanese manufacturing giant Sharp. -- There are other hurdles to overcome as well. Producing 35 million silicon wafers requires more than 700 tons of silicon. Already, the simultaneous booms in the computer chip and solar-cell industries have combined to produce a global supply shortage of crystalline polysilicon, a material that is forged into tubular ingots and then sliced into thin wafers to make both fingernail-size silicon chips and palm-size wafers. ...

Solar Windows: Transparent Solar Cells Become Safer

ronjon — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 18:07:15 -0700

...man-made cells used to harvest light--so-called solar photovoltaics and other technologies--lose more of the sun's energy than they absorb, and they require tremendous amounts of energy to manufacture. One alternative, known as dye-sensitized solar cells, offers similar energy capture and lower cost but had relied on potentially toxic liquid components, preventing its widespread use. Research presented at the American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco on September 12, however, has shown how such cells can be made from safer liquids and pointed to possibilities for a more bountiful light harvest. ...

Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV)

ronjon — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 12:46:34 -0700

There is a growing consensus that distributed photovoltaic systems that provide electricity at the point of use will be the first to reach widespread commercialization. Chief among these distributed applications are PV power systems for individual buildings. -- Interest in the building integration of photovoltaics, where the PV elements actually become an integral part of the building, often serving as the exterior weather skin, is growing worldwide. PV specialists and innovative designers in Europe, Japan, and the U.S. are now exploring creative ways of incorporating solar electricity into their work. A whole new vernacular of Solar Electric Architecture is beginning to emerge. ...

The Neuron-Galaxy

ronjon — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 12:34:38 -0700

One is only micrometers wide. The other is billions of light-years across. One shows neurons in a mouse brain (quite similar to human neurons). The other is a simulated supercomputer image of the universe as a whole. Together they suggest the surprisingly similar patters found in vastly different natural phenomena. ...

Sustainability Institute

ronjon — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 11:23:33 -0700

We focus on understanding the root causes of unsustainable behavior in complex systems to help restructure systems and shift mindsets that will help move human society toward sustainability. Our staff includes biologists, writers, social scientists, system dynamics modelers, and facilitators bringing a wide variety of experiences and skills to our work. ...

MojoPac and Moka5: The computers in your pocket

ronjon — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 08:48:46 -0700

I think these new developments in portable virtualization technology bear close watching indeed, especially for their potential impact in Asian countries like India.

...With MojoPac, you have to install applications on your device before transferring data, to safeguard intellectual property. -- Once you’ve made these installations, though, it takes two minutes to transfer data, via your iPod to any other PC. That means you can use the same iTunes music wherever you go. And if you install your Outlook and VPN solution, it becomes your virtual office — where you can check your email, for example. -- Appajodu says he expects MojoPac to have good adoption in Asia, where people have fewer laptops, and rely on public computing facilities, such as cyber-kiosks.

"PCs are increasingly hard to manage and hard to use, even for sophisticated users. moka5 brings a whole new approach that is much simpler and more powerful for the user, and has the potential to redefine the PC business." -- Vinod Khosla, Founder of Khosla Ventures ...

ARTI-India: Appropriate Rural Technology Institute

ronjon — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 11:57:54 -0700

ARTI is an NGO based in Maharashtra, founded by a group of scientists and social workers in 1996. The mission of the organisation is to serve as an instrument of sustainable rural development through the application of scientific and technological knowledge.

ARTI undertakes research to study, develop, standardise, implement, commercialise and popularise innovative appropriate rural technologies with special emphasis on making traditional rural businesses more profitable and also on generating novel employment opportunities in rural areas. We have now nearly 25 standardised and field-tested technologies to offer to rural entrepreneurs through our Rural Entrepreneurship Development Centre (REDC). Our sphere of activities is no longer restricted to Maharashtra, but has spread to other states including Goa, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pardesh, Sikkim, Tripura and Kerala. Some of our technologies are also being tried out in other developing countries in Asia and Africa. ...

ThinkCycle: Open Collaborative Design

ronjon — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 12:24:09 -0700

ThinkCycle is an academic, non-profit initiative engaged in supporting distributed collaboration towards design challenges among underserved communities and the environment. ThinkCycle seeks to create a culture of open-source design innovation, with ongoing collaboration among individuals, communities and organizations around the world.

How does one apply an Open Source approach to Hardware Products and Engineering Design? How can a global community of distributed domain experts and stakeholders collaborate towards evolving solutions to critical problem domains? –– That is the driving motivation behind the ThinkCycle Initiative. ...

Institute of HeartMath - decoding the intelligence of the heart

ronjon — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 14:44:47 -0700

For centuries, the heart has been considered the source of emotion, courage and wisdom. At the Institute of HeartMath (IHM) Research Center, we are exploring the physiological mechanisms by which the heart communicates with the brain, thereby influencing information processing, perceptions, emotions and health. We are asking questions such as: Why do people experience the feeling or sensation of love and other positive emotional states in the area of the heart and what are the physiological ramifications of these emotions? How do stress and different emotional states affect the autonomic nervous system, the hormonal and immune systems, the heart and brain? Over the years we have experimented with different psychological and physiological measures, but it was consistently heart rate variability, or heart rhythms, that stood out as the most dynamic and reflective of inner emotional states and stress. It became clear that negative emotions lead to increased disorder in the heart's rhythms and in the autonomic nervous system, thereby adversely affecting the rest of the body. In contrast, positive emotions create increased harmony and coherence in heart rhythms and improve balance in the nervous system. The health implications are easy to understand: Disharmony in the nervous system leads to inefficiency and increased stress on the heart and other organs while harmonious rhythms are more efficient and less stressful to the body's systems...

Our research and that of others indicate that the heart is far more than a simple pump. The heart is, in fact, a highly complex, self-organized information processing center with its own functional "brain" that communicates with and influences the cranial brain via the nervous system, hormonal system and other pathways. These influences profoundly affect brain function and most of the body's major organs, and ultimately determine the quality of life. ...

Hansdehar - The first knowledge village of India

ronjon — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 17:38:24 -0700

India is moving towards a Knowledge Based Society (KBS) with the help of Information Technology (IT). IT enablement of the villages is critical for empowering the rural India and to bring about eR-Commerce. The villagers of Hansdehar have taken this initiative to bridge the gap between the Government and the Citizens through this web interface for all the stakeholders involved in the development and upliftment of the village. This initiative is not a government initiative and is purely an effort of the village community to create itself an 'Empowered Knowledge Village' which can escalate its problems to the stakeholders through the IT.

NaturalGenesis: The Worldwide Discovery of a Creative Organic Universe

ronjon — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 03:48:00 -0700

This is a fascinating website, full of excellent annotated references to recently published books re "a once and future encounter with an embryonic, numinous universe." Provides an ongoing update of Sri Aurobindo's seminal idea of a universe endowed with an innate evolutionary dynamic toward consciousness and transcendence.

"...A Creative, Organic Universe: From this holistic vista, the over fifteen hundred references posted here can testify to a once and future encounter with an embryonic, numinous universe. Science began by reading nature as a sacred book. The endeavor went on to explore and catalogue atom, cell, species and star. But its necessary method of looking down into matter and back in time reduced and lost life along the way. Earth and human were removed from privileged regard to a rare, contingent blossom not to appear again. This physical agenda, lately in search of a quantum theory of everything, seems almost Ptolemaic in its efforts to shore up an inadequate model and misplaced emphasis.

As the references attest, a growing number of researchers and scholars advocate a quite different scenario. An organically self-organizing universe is increasingly understood which can return life and intelligence to a central significance. In a biological cosmos whose innate properties give rise to sentient beings on cellular planets, its essence is most evident from whom they may become. No longer a random tangent, the manifest emergence of life, mind and informed selves can define a vectorial arrow of cosmogenesis. People are once more of cosmic notice, this time as its leading, creative, spiritual edge." ...

108 mpg Eco-friendly "CLEVER" car unveiled in Britain. - Test at Auroville?

ronjon — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 20:10:43 -0700

Check out this article re the new 3-wheeled ecocar unveiled today in Britain. It's been developed over the past three years by a collaborative team of nine European partners from industry and academia, funded by the European Union.

I think cars like this offer a possible path to a sustainable transportation future, especially in compact urban areas.

I wonder if Auroville could partner with these folks for a real-life test of a few of these cars? Fact that they use compressed natural gas would fit right in with Auroville's current extensive use of CNG. Sounds like their crash protection would help cut down the high injury rate of motorcycles & scooters. - I'll bet they're quieter than our current motorbikes so would cut down on the AV noise pollution problem.

Hmmm, we may have to involve India's government to allow us to drive them on the roads around Auroville, e.g. Pondicherry. Anyone have any ideas re ways to follow-up on these possibilities?