Masdar Institute campus expansion opens

The second phase of the Masdar Institute campus has started operating, and my department, Computing and Information Sciences, moved in this past week. For us in CIS, that means no more weird smells and machinery sounds occasionally wafting and blaring in from the chemical labs adjacent to us in the old research building, although those did add to the "sciencey" atmosphere of the place.

The new campus still uses a lot of the old architectural styles; at least, that's way it looks from the outside. Most of the new buildings have the clay-coated wavy and air-padded screened facades of the residential and research buildings in the older part of campus. The new part of campus also seems much, much larger, with multiple courtyards.

The only new building style is represented in a couple of blocks that have facades that slope outwards on all sides. One of these blocks is literally hinged to the top of a set of pillars, which hold it over the swimming pools. Presumably, this design will make their smooth faces less likely to collect dust.

One major concession that has been made is the addition of a rather large car parking lot right in front of the new part of campus. For a few years now, access to the old campus was limited to shuttles, electric vehicles and self-piloting electric pod cars that ferried staff, faculty, students and visitors between the campus proper and the parking lots on the outskirts of the city. Now, private cars will be able to enter the city itself.

Everything is nice and fresh. Our new premises have wide corridors and a lot of meeting/common space, and (seemingly) better cooling.

Environmentally friendly shoppers likely to cheat

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/Environmentally-friendly-shoppers-likely-to-cheat-/articleshow/5698197.cms

Environmentally aware consumers are more likely to lie, cheat and be unkind than regular shoppers, a study suggests.

Researchers say that people have a limited stock of goodwill and that being virtuous in one part of life leads to meanness in another. The phenomenon called "compensatory ethics" came to light in a series of experiments ...

Edible Cutlery: Colorful, Eco-friendly, Crispity-Crunchy

It was an idea that struck Narayana Peesapaty thousands of feet above the ground—on a flight, while he was being served refreshments. What got this 38-year-old scientist thinking was the plastic cutlery accompanying that hot meal. In a jiffy, the concept of edible cutlery—spoons, forks and chopsticks that you don’t need to throw away after use, and are healthy and nutritive enough to eat—was born. And, even if they had to be disposed, they would degrade in less than a day. "The idea was to give an alternative to people who do not want to use plastics," says Peesapaty, a Master in Forestry Management with over 16 years of consulting and research experience behind him. That was 2004.

It took Peesapaty, a former scientist at ICRISAT in Hyderabad, another two years to give commercial shape to his idea. Peesapaty began by checking out the suitability of various cereal flours—wheat, rice and sorghum (johar)—as base for his edible cutlery. He finally zeroed in on sorghum as the base flour. Vegetable pulp—spinach, beetroot and carrot—were used to add colour and nutritive value to the cutlery. Spinach gave it a green shade, beetroot red and carrots brought out a yellow tinge.

The production line, comprising blenders, slicers, dyes and an oven, had to be designed and calibrated to ensure that the spoons retained their hardness, while not losing out on their taste and nutritive value.

http://www.outlookbusiness.com/inner.aspx?articleid=1903&editionid=50&catgid=9&subcatgid=897

Not only are they eco-friendly, they also contain sorghum and vegetable pulp, making them health-friendly and nutritious as well. Pretty neat idea, really. And a much-needed one; plastic is doing enough damage to the environment in India at present, not to mention the infrastructure. The railway people have already proposed replacing the huge numbers of plastic cups used by passengers for quick train platform chai with traditional clay cups (although they will probably have to be mass-produced). This idea has already been around in some form; ice-cream served in wafer cups, for instance. One may also see some pani-puri vendors on the streets of urban India serving their fare in bowls made of heat-pressed layered leaves (my uncle in Central India manufactures such leaf-based cutlery, and industries like these help provide employment to the forest folk too). I look forward to the day when these innovations catch on, and disposable plastic becomes a rare sight. Let us wish this entrepreneur all the best for his venture, and hope there are many more like him.