When I ask anybody what his/her understanding of the term “learning” is, I get so many different answers. Some say, getting new things, information, knowledge, skills, experience, view, behaviour, opinion, perspective or visualization and many more. Wikipedia, terms learning as the process of acquiring new, or modifying existing,
knowledge, behaviours, skills, values, or preferences. \

As an intellectual being, we are continuously evolving ourselves using one tool – LEARNING! In fact, I call it as learning. It can be acquisition of new set of information, interpretation of new perspective or application of existing theory or knowledge in an altogether new perspective/ scenario. As humans, we use this method to improve our thinking, and I realized that our actions are born from our thoughts. Our thoughts are products of our values, and our values come from our own belief system. Most people misinterpret learning as formal education – which is sub of learning. Formal education refers to the bare minimum set of information, skill sets and knowledge that are required to survive in this world. However, that is not sufficient for developing human life. The world is evolving day by day with new set of information, challenges, diversity and many more.

When I did some deep thinking about how to improve my learning, I began asking those around me and every answer seems to right and a valid perspective of these complex phenomena called learning. One can always get new set of learning from one’s colleagues, friends, family and all members of society at large. Interpretation given by a hawaldar, a vegetable vendor, a child or even a homeless person on the road side can influence one’s thought process. When one appliesone’s sixth sense, (I call it as common sense) with this new interpretation in one’s work environment; the corporate honchos called it the “out-of-the-box” thinking. Let me share a story. There was once an expert musician. Whenever he played violin, it rained; even in a desert. Once he went to watch a circus. In one of the performances, a bear was dancing to a tune played by the violinist from the circus. The musician approached him and said, ‘You can make only a trained bear dance to your tune. But my music can make any animal dance!’ The circus’ violinist rejected this claim as sheer nonsense. An argument ensued, resulting in a duel. The circus’ artist called in a lion to face the musician. The lion, on hearing his music, began to gyrate in an ecstatic dance. Next, a cheetah was called and that animal too began to dance. The circus’ artist send in a tiger next. The musician continued to play nonchalantly. But the tiger was not enchanted by his music. On the contrary the tiger charged towards the musician. The audience scattered in terror. The musician threw his violin in the air and ran for his life. Luckily, he managed to escape from the tiger.

The trainers soon caught the tiger and locked it up in a cage. The exhausted musician now accepted his defeat; however he was still astounded as to why his music failed to charm that particular tiger. The circus artist explained with a smile, ‘The reason is very simple. That tiger is tone deaf. It is a birth defect and this particular tiger does not have ears or even the apertures for hearing. The audience soon noticed this and tried to escape. But you were so involved in your playing that you failed to notice this simple fact!’

Moral of this story is that awareness about present makes a lot of difference in learning. When one is at the receiving end and acquires required information related to things and environment around oneself, then one can make relevant interpretation and live a smart life.

Learning is an evolving process and always starts with acquisition of information, experience and degree of correctness of information sources. When this is correctly received then judgment or interpretation can be used to handle any kind of challenges.

The author of this article is Prof. (Dr.) Risil Chhatrala, Associate Professor & HoD, Department of Electronics & Telecommunication, International Institute of Information Technology, I 2 IT, Pune. (www.isquareit.edu.in) (risilc@isquareit.edu.in)

Neural networks are adaptive learning systems, inspired by the biological neural systems. These may be trained with input-output data or may operate in a self-organizing mode. The basic block in an NN is the mathematical model of a neuron as in Eqn. 1. Three fundamental components of a neuron are the connection links that provide the inputs with weights for = 1,…, , an adder that sums all the weighted inputs to prepare the input to the activation function along with the bias associated with each neuron, and an activation function maps the input to the output of the neuron.
(1)
an activation function f is typically a sigmoid function. The scalar parameters of the neuron, the weight and the bias, are adjustable. Single input neuron, multi-input neuron, and multi-input multi-neuron models are shown in Fig. 1.

Neuron activation functions
Several activation functions have been used in neural networks. The simplest of all is the linear activation function used as a linear approximators. This function can be uniploar with saturation levels of 0 and 1or bipolar with saturation levels of -1 to +1 as shown in Fig. 2(a). The threshold and signum functions outputs vary abruptly between 0 to +1 and -1 to +1, respectively as shown in Fig. 2(b). These are used in perceptrons for classification problems. The sigmoid and Gaussian activation functions are nonlinear, differentiable, and continuous. These properties extend the application of neural networks from linear analysis to complex and nonlinear analysis applications. The sigmoid functions are a family of S-shaped functions. Logistic function, as shown in Fig. 2(c), is the most widely used sigmoid function andit has lower bound of 0 and upper bound of 1. Another commonly used sigmoid function is the hyperbolic tangent function with lower bound at -1 and upper bound at 1 as shown in Fig. 2(c). In both of these sigmoid functions, for inputs grater than 0, output initially rapidly and later slowly increases. For inputs less than 0, output rapidly decreases and later slowly decreases. Gaussian functions are symmetric bell shaped functions it represents the input with zero mean and standard deviation equals to one. Standard normal curve is the Gaussian function with bounds 0 and 1. It peaks at zero input and is more sensitive around zero input and less or zero sensitive at tails. In Gaussian

complement, more sensitive at tails and zero at zero input.

Keywords: Neural Network, Neuron Model, Activation Functions, Linear Bipolar, Signum, Sigmodial, Log-sigmoid, Hyperbolic, Tan-sigmoid

Dr. S. Mohan Mahalakshi Naidu
Associate Professor – Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering Department

“We are the sum total of our experience. Those experiences, be they positive or negative make us the person we are, at any given point in our lives.” – B. J. Neblett.

Knowledge comes from learning; but ‘experience’ comes from living. A life without problems and challenges is like a school without lessons. Teaching was not always my passion. Mrs. Kale my Geography teacher was the first to appreciate my skills and said that my voice was apt for a teaching profession. I doubted, but she believed. After my post-graduation I started my career in corporate world and worked in the industry for close to two years. But destinyhad its own plans and I chose to join the teaching profession and today being a teacher for almost a decade, here’s what I would like to share.

No matter how deep our knowledge of a domain is… no matter how many degrees we have…no matter how smart we are… no matter how fast we climb the ladder to leadership… no matter how good the infrastructure of the college is… no matter how impressed the peers and parents are… our students will NOT learn a single thing unless they know that as teachers we really care about them.

Mahatma Gandhi once listed the top three qualities that a teacher should possess – ‘MAMTA’, meaning love, affection and caring, ‘SAMTA’ – meaning equality and impartiality and finally ‘KSHAMTA’ – meaning ability and capability. As a teacher I have imbibed these values and practice them; making them an integral part of who I am as a teacher. And I must say that I have seen the impact that this has had on my students’ learning.

This brings a question in my mind – can I be the teacher that students expect me to be?The kind of teacher who encourages students to believe in themselves, to find hope in the classroom, to strengthen the roots and give wings to my students’ aspirations so as to help them follow their dreams, to believe and never give up.Every day, I believe that I can be better than what I was the day before.

Together with I2IT, I wish to nurture our students beyond textbooks and face the world and succeed in their future. Just like my teacher, I never doubt my students and their capabilities. I believe in them to experience life and grow.

The author of this blog article is Rakhi Wagh, Assistant Professor,Department of Engineering Sciences, Hope Foundation’s International Institute of Information Technology, (I²IT), Pune (www.isquareit.edu.in) (rakhiw@isquareit.edu.in)

Mathematics is a constantly improving branch of knowledge. It is influencing our day-to-day life;however, commoners do not understand its impact. Most people think that mathematics is a branch of knowledge that includes only techniques of calculation of numbers and of shapes and sizes of various objects. The general impression is that mathematics is difficult to learn, understand and apply in the real-life situations. For many people it is a brain twister, creating fear in the mind. In school education, most of the dropout students have apprehensions about mathematics and they rarely take up the subject again in their life. The actual fault lies with educationists, who don’t put forth the beauty and applicability of math. The subject is presented in such a way that most of the students find it complex and intricate. This leads to the question that what kind of mathematics needs to be introduced in the school level of education?

Generally,learning mathematics starts with the introduction to numbers and arithmetic operations, followed by introduction to geometrical shapes and their properties. The enhancement of learning process can be done by correlating these ideas with the day to day life of students. There is an obvious confusion in the mind of most students that mathematics is just limited to arithmetic. However, mathematics is much more than that. Thus, doing calculations very fast does not indicate that one is good in mathematics. There are people who have the ability of calculating fast and even create unique records, but are not recognized as mathematicians; although it is important that, to become a mathematician one should be able to identify create a close association with numerical calculation sand arithmetical operations.

Recreational mathematics is a branch of mathematics where mathematics meets entertainment and is useful in learning mathematics. It creates interest and motivates students to appreciate various concepts of mathematics. This kind of mathematics eradicates the fear of mathematics among students and helps them develop interest in the subject. Nowadays most educationists promote and incorporate recreational mathematics at school level. Just a trivia – in medieval India recreational mathematics was part of our education system.

Defining recreational mathematics may be difficult; but it encapsulates many things such as riddles, puzzles, games, numerical calculations, optimization techniques, the popular Sudoku problem etc. Though mathematics deals with abstract concepts which are difficult to understand, recreational mathematics helps students in the development of these concepts in a very interesting way. Recreational mathematics present many challenges for students to learn which can reinforce mathematical concepts and widen students’ thinking capabilities.

Many researchers and mathematicians have contributed to this branch. There are mathematicians who have shifted their focus from pure mathematics to the development of recreational mathematics. Raymond Smullyan is one such mathematician. This American mathematician devoted his career towards development of logical puzzles. This creates a strong background for computer programmers to build logic. Such puzzles encourage students to think logically, which will help them develop their programming abilities.

Mandar Vijay Datar (M.Tech. SET)
Assistant Professor (Engineering Mathematics)
Department of Engineering Sciences,
Hope Foundation’s International Institute of Information Technology, Hinjawadi, Pune

As per the latest reports by the World Health Organisation, there is near about 20 lakh COVID-19 cases reported across the world so far, with a little over 1,26,776  deaths. In short, the corona virus has affected people’s life irrespective of their social and economic condition. In the thick of all the gloom and doom, there is a silver lining. Mother earth seems to have rejuvenated itself.Smog has given way to blue skies, marine life is improving, pollution levels have dropped, and animals as well as birds are moving about freely.

A few days ago, Noida’s busy Sector saw an unexpected guest. A Nilgai was seen walking slowly on the road. To the common man, this incident was a welcome change from the usually traffic jammed road. Similarly, in Kerala’s Kozhikode, a Malabar Civet, an endangered animal, was seen walking on the road.  Ever since the coronavirus pandemic struck across the globe, several reports have emerged highlighting the return of many species to their natural habitats.

The Government’s drastic decision to shut down factories, commercial establishments, and vehicular movement, has resulted in a drastic drop in the pollution levels across the world. As the pandemic continues to halt industrial activities, it has allowed a natural purification of air. Satellite images have proved that there has been considerable improvement in the air quality around us. Nature’s Victory! According to a research by Columbia University, both carbon monoxide and carbon-dioxide emissions were observed to have fallen.

The quiet street corners, empty parking lots, and deserted parks have given more space for nature to take control. The humdrum surrounding tourism and the reduced number of motorboats in Venice has led to cleaner waterways. The nationwide lockdown is also providing perfect condition for the Olive Ridley Turtles to lay eggs in Odisha’s Gahirmatha beach and Rushikulya’s rookery. Usually, this event is known to attract huge crowds and officials from the Forest Department generally deploy a considerable amount of efforts and resources to patrol gatherings, protect the eggs, and later release the hatchlings into the sea. However, this time, there were no such arrangements but nature has taken care of everything.

“COVID-19 has been an eye-opener. It has shown people as to how mother earth can bounce back to life if humans allow for it. But, unless the society cares for the environment and changes its attitude, all of it is bound to get back to square one,” – Ram Murthy.  However, is this a long-term trend? It is said that times of disruptions tend to lead to big transitions. The COVID-19 shutdown has given people a glimpse into what the world might look like if we live sustainably and conserve the resources of the planet. But, can people expect a transformation in the future? Nevertheless, the improvement in the air quality owing to the outbreak of the pandemic looks like a ray a ray of hope in the times to come.

Keywords:-COVID-19, Environment, social, economic, coronavirus

Name:- Mahesh S Waghmare,
Dept:- Department of Engineering Sciences
International Institute of Information Technology, Pune.

Introduction: – The flood can occur anywhere after heavy rain. Flood forecasting sufficiently in advance enables a warning to be given to the people likely to be affected and further enable authorities to take appropriate precautionary measures. It thus forms a very important and relatively inexpensive non-structural flood management measure, however, it must be realized that a flood warning is meaningful only if it is given in advance. Further erroneous warnings will cause the populace to lose confidence and faith in the system. Thus the dual requirement of reliability and advance notice is the essential ingredient of a flood forecasting system.

Current Flooding Scenario in Maharashtra

MAHARASHTRA FLOOD 2019

Multiple parts of Maharashtra were battered by heavy rains that began during the second week of August 2019. The downpour particularly affected the districts of Kolhapur, Sangli, Satara, Thane, Pune, Nashik, Palghar, Ratnagiri, Raigad and Sindhudurg.

According to a report from August 12, rain and flood-related incidents had killed 35 people across the state. As many as 761 villages were affected, and more than 4 lakh people were displaced. To conduct rescue operations, multiple teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Navy, Coast Guard, and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) were deployed in the affected areas.

The Warna river at Samdoli in Sangli, the Krishna at Arjunwad in Sangli, and the Krishna at Kurunwad in Kolhapur were all flowing at record levels. In fact, floodwaters in Kolhapur and Sangli only began to recede after the flood gates of the Almatti dam were opened, which subsequently led to damage in Karnataka.

(Credits: Sachin Haralkar/BCCL Mumbai)

Causes of Flooding

There are several causes of floods and they differ from region to region. The causes may vary from a rural area to an urban area. Some of the major causes of floods in India are given below.

Heavy rainfall: It is the primary cause for floods in India. Especially, rainfall in a short span of time is of much concern as they are leading to flash floods. For instance, in July 2017, Mount Abu received the heaviest rainfall in over 300 years in a span of 24 hours. The hill station received an unprecedented 700 mm of rain in 24 hours. As per a study instituted by the United Nations, climate change phenomenon is believed to be behind flash floods across the globe.

Siltation of the Rivers: Heavy siltation of the riverbed reduces the water carrying capacity of the rivers and streams leading to flooding. For instance, as a result of siltation, the Brahmaputra has been expanding – ranging from 2 km to 14 km – leading to frequent flooding in the North East region

.Blockage in the Drains: Blocked drains are the primary cause for the floods in urban areas, especially in metros. For instance, failure of the drainage system is believed to be one of the primary causes behind the Chennai floods in December 2015 that led to the death of more than 400 people.

Impact of flooding

The most important consequence of floods is the loss of life and property. Structures like houses, bridges and roads get damaged by the gushing water.
Some of the negative impacts of recurrent floods are given below –

Impact on Agriculture: Recurrent floods impact the agriculture sector adversely. Due to recurrent floods, fields get submerged and lead to the loss of harvest increasing the vulnerability of farmers to indebtedness. The loss is not only for the farming community but also the common man is hit hardly due to persistent inflation. Besides, the threat to life of milch animals impact the farming community adversely.

Moreover, floods may also affect the soil characteristics. The land may be rendered infertile due to erosion of top-layer.

Damage to infrastructure: Recurrent floods cause severe damage to economic infrastructure like transportation networks, electricity generation and distribution equipment,etc.
Outbreak of diseases: Lack of proper drinking water facilities, contamination of water (well, ground water, piped water supply) leads to outbreak of epidemics like diarrhoea, viral infection, malaria and many other infectious diseases. The probability of outbreak of diseases in highly dense areas of India is high.

Besides the above, strain on the administration, cost of rescue and rehabilitation of the flood affected population are other causes of concern.

Remedial Measures

The solution to the problem of recurrent floods lies in mitigation and rehabilitation measures. Some of the important measures are given below.

1. Mapping of the flood prone areas is a primary step involved in reducing the risk of the region. Historical records give the indication of the flood inundation areas and the period of occurrence and the extent of the coverage.
2. Land use control will reduce danger of life and property when waters inundate the flood plains and the coastal areas.
3. The number of casualties is related to the population in the area at risk. Hence, in areas where people already have built their settlements, measures should be taken to relocate to better sites so as to reduce vulnerability.
4. No major development should be permitted in the areas which are subjected to high flooding. Important facilities like hospitals, schools should be built in safe areas. In urban areas, water holding areas can be created like ponds, lakes or low-lying areas.
5. The buildings should be constructed on an elevated area. If necessary build on stilts or platform.
6. The amount of runoff can be decreased with the help of reforestation, protection of vegetation, clearing of debris from streams and other water holding areas, conservation of ponds and lakes etc.
7. Flood diversion measures like construction of levees, embankments and dams should be undertaken.

Conclusion:-

As per an estimate, 12% of India’s land is prone to floods. As per the Central Water Commission (CWC), floods resulted in a loss of 0.86% of the total GDP. However, in the present decade, this share has come down to 0.1% of the GDP. Taking into account the growing size of the economy, still, the loss is huge. Hence the administration should take concrete measures on a long term basis to tame the menace of recurrent floods.

Keywords: – flood forecasting, flooding, rainfall, flood management, flood

NAME: – Mahesh S Waghmare
Deptt: – Department of Engineering Sciences

Smart Grid and its Challenges:-

The growing consumer demand of electric energy every day and the aging transmission and distribution power grid infrastructure in India is causing new challenges for engineers. In recent years, domestic as well as industrial consumers are using more and more computers, servers, communication equipment, process control equipment, sophisticated machinery and power electronic equipment for automation purpose and to improve efficiency of various mechanical and chemical processes. Thiselectronic equipment is called as “sensitive load” (or critical load) because it does not tolerate any voltage fluctuations, voltage sags and power failures of electric supply. In short, the consumer these daysdemands high expectations of power quality from electrical power utilities. If the electrical power is not maintained within strict power quality specifications, this sensitive electronic load equipment may get damaged or may malfunction causing huge production loss and data loss to the consumers.

At the same time, it is not possible to discard huge investments made by Governments in various countries in terms of transmission and distribution grid infrastructure. Hence, the challenge is to make the existing power grid more efficient and reliable by minimizing voltage and frequency fluctuations, providing good power quality and improving grid stability. To reduce carbon emissions due to burning of fossil fuel, government is encouraging small to mid-size installations of renewable energy sources such as solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and wind power generation systems. The nature of these renewable energy sources is that they produce intermittent power generation based on solar and wind energy availability during the day and their high penetration in grids are posing problems of voltage and frequency instability. Due to distributed nature of energy sources, fast response to the user demand needs to be achieved in more efficient manner and it is also required to balance the demand and supply patterns more closely in order to avoid power outages and voltage fluctuations at user end.

Consumer demand increase on the electrical energy sources makes it necessary to have for more efficient power generation and distribution systems instead of only increasing the installed capacity. Hence, the existing power grid needs to be converted into a “smart grid” so as to make it more intelligent, self-healing, efficient and consumer friendly so thatconsumerscan get rebate in tariff if electricity is consumed during non-peak hours.

Smart grid is nothing but transformation of existing grid into futuristic power grid which incorporates smart metering devices, advanced control techniques and Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) at transmission and distribution levels in order to supply electricity in a more user-friendly way. Few important characteristics of smart grid are user friendliness, self-sustenance, robustness in terms of its ability to accommodate various generation and storage requirements and market driven efficient operation, high power quality and reduced energy storage capacity. Hence smart grid is essential for various environmental, political, socio-economic and technical factors. Key elements of a smart grid include renewable energy sources, controllable energy storage, micro-energy management system, demand side energy management system and advanced metering including smart metering devices as shown in Fig. 1 below.

Smart grid also incorporates demand side load management which allows customers to make selection of their energy consumption requirements during a day schedule and helps utility companies to reduce their peak load demand significantly. Demand side load management allows customers to make decisions regarding their energy consumption and helps the energy providers to reduce the peak load demand and reshape the load profile. It focusses on utilizing power saving technologies, electricity tariffs, monetary incentives and government policies to mitigate peak load demand instead of increasing the installed capacity. The shape of load demand curve is changed by reducing the total load demand during the peak hours by shifting the loads to be served during more appropriate timeof the day thereby reducing the overall operational cost.

Another technique of demand side load management is the use of electric spring technology. This technology can be used for providing good power quality by stabilizing voltage and power fluctuations caused due to renewable energy generation such as Photovoltaic (PV) and wind power sources. Electric spring essentially consists of power electronic inverter which dampens the voltage fluctuations caused by intermittent renewable generation by absorbing or injecting the reactive power and distributing it to the non-critical loads which areconnected in series with the electric spring. It ensures stable voltage and power to the sensitive electronic loads.Electric spring essentially converts the non-critical, wide voltage resistive load such as heating and lighting load to a “smart load” which follows the patterns of renewable power generation and the voltage at the critical load is maintained constant. It also improves the power factor and reduces the energy storage requirements of the grid.

Future Research:

Currently extensive research is going on in this emerging area of “smart grid” in terms of development of new algorithms to make the grid more efficient and secure. Confidentiality of data is very critical for reliable and smooth operation of smart grid. Also, large amount of data gets generated within the grid, hence data analysis and data mining techniques are used for processing the data efficiently and take smart / intelligent decisions regarding demand side load management by training the grid using fuzzy logic and artificial neural network techniques. Consumer load patterns can be analyzed and decisions can be taken regarding intelligent switching of the loads and/or use of electric spring technology so as to reduce the peak demand on the grid and energy storage requirements.

Prof. Ravindra Joshi
Associate Professor, Dept. of Engineering Sciences
International Institute of Information Technology (I²IT)
P-14 Rajiv Gandhi Infotech Park, Pune-411057
Email: ravindraj@isquareit.edu.in
Mobile: 9822021594