String theory!

I had a very little idea about modern physics; I new the name of modern theories; well may be what they 'state' as well. But hardly any idea about String theory. I tried several times to understand what it is but in most cases I was demotivated by complicated description of String theory. I had an idea that it is not easy to explain String theory in plain english, or even if it is described it is impossible for me to visualize what it is. In a nutshell, somehow I got the idea that String theory is not for me and don't try this way.

Then one complain is pretty common among non-physicist, what have the physicist done during last fifty years? Some of them were even more aggressive to claim that age of physics has finished. Well, even though I have no idea what they are doing, I had a great respect for the physicist and I used to argue them by saying what they are doing is far reaching for the engineers; probably that is the reason why we are not seeing any breakthrough from experimental perspective! By knowing little bit about String theory I have to say that I am partially true unfortunately not entirely. It seems like String theory is based on something that is not doable now not even in foreseeable future; then what the theory is all about?

The theory is all about an eleven/ten dimensional thing and that is the cause of everything is this earth, it has very well formed set of constants those make everything different from one another; and we human being can see only three (four) dimensions and rest are somehow vanished (either they curl up or they are just beyond our universe) and we cannot perform any experiment to neither falsify nor justify the theory. Wow! what a beautifully stated elegant idea of modern physics! After reading carefully, I believe I come up with another theory that might have more implications, "God made the universe and he made two different things called energy and particle, he live in a holy place where no human being can ever enter or imagine." Doesn't it sound right?

It is elegant because, it will solve not only the problems of physics but also the social problems as well. Why it doesn't sound good? Because we cannot prove the existence of God and neither falsify his existence, the same thing is true for String theory (at least right now). This is interesting, when I was a kid I memorize the definition of science, where there was significance for experiment and analysis but without that part I am now confused what I should call it?

আবল-তাবল

অনেকদিন পর লিখতে বসছি, কি জানি লিখব ভাবছিলাম ভুলে গেছি। আজকাল মাথা ঠিকমত কাজ করে না। মাথারই বা দোষ দেই কি করে, কমতো আর ধকল যায় না ওর উপর দিয়ে। মাথাটারে মাঝেমধ্যে খুলে রাখতে পারলে খারাপ হইত না, আমি আর মাথা দুইজনেই ক্ষানিকটা শান্তি পাইতাম। যন্ত্রনা! মানুষ কেন লেগো দিয়ে তৈরীনা :( যাইহোক কিছুত আর করা যাবে না, বরং কিছুক্ষন আবোল তাবোল কথা লিখি।

আজকাল মনে হচ্ছে আবল তাবল কথা লিখার জন্যেও চিন্তা করা লাগতেছে, হমমম... অনেকদিন রাজা উজির মারা হয় না, আগে কত ভীষন ভীষন চিন্তা করতাম, রাজা উজির মারতাম, আজকাল আর কিছু করা হয় না। আমি কি মারা গেলাম নাকি! তপু ভাই বলত আমার যখন খোজার ইচ্ছা শেষ হয়ে যাবে, তখনই নাকি আমি মারা যাব! আমি মনে হয় আগের চেয়ে ভীত হয়ে গেছি, এখন আমি অনেক কিছু বিশ্বাস করা শুরু করছি :( খোজ করতে ভয় লাগে। আমি মনে হয় মারা যাচ্ছি, এরপর হয়ত একটা ভ্যদামাছ হয়ে বেচে থাকব, না! আমি তা চাই না!

ভাল একটা খবর আছে! আমি বাড়ি যাবার টিকেট কাটছি! ডিসেম্বরে বাড়ি যাব, গিয়ে কি করব জানি না তবে যাব। অনেকদিন পর বাড়ি যাব! আমার অবশ্য বিশেষ আগ্রহ ছিল না, কিন্তু আব্বুর শরীর ভাল না; আমাকে বাড়ি যেতেই হবে। যাই, গিয়েই দেখি নতুন কি আছে।

ভাল লাগে না, ঝড় থেমে যাচ্ছে! ঝড় থেমে যাচ্ছে! ভবঘুরে ঝড়টা থেমে যাচ্ছে একটু একটু করে, প্রতি নিয়ত মনে করিয়ে দিচ্ছে, আমার সময় শেষ হয়ে আসছে। আমি আমার মত করে বাচতে চাই, বাচতে চাই!

Art of writing

So, now I am learning 'Art of writing', it is not about misleading the people, it is about presenting something positively. It is writing something several times but still each version looks like entirely new one. They called it art of writing :) Interestingly this art is everywhere in academia. This art is so emerging that NSF has to offer a workshop for scientific ethics and they are trying to enforce it by making a prerequisite for research assistants.

The motivation for the conference organizers is money and the motivations for the researchers is more funding. Organizing more and more conferences and publishing more and more papers is like win-win situation. Researchers are happy because they can publish more and get more funding and organizers are happy because they can earn more money. It's an interesting industry; by the grace of this industry we have got few bunch of politicians and lobbyist claiming themselves as scholars!

Here are some interesting posts from Daniel Lemire's blog, "How reliable is science?", "Manifesto for Half-Arsed Academic Research", "How to get everyone talking about your research!"... Anyway, this what we called research and we are proudly proud of our research :D

Microsoft Academic Search

I came to know about Microsoft Academic Search couple days ago. It gives a very fancy visual view of researchers, conferences, journal etc. Probably they are competing with Google Scholar. Google scholar doesn't have any fancy view. In my opinion what a student/professor needs is the results not the views. Very few of their targeted people care about view, how fancy the results look like and so, what they care about is results. Isn't it wrong effort for wrong group of people.

Even if I accept the view, the search is essentially slow. Probably the reason is their fancy view; the speed bothers me a lot. What I care about is first correct results not slow fancy view. On the top of that the results are not updated. I tried with different people and most of the time, it missed the very recent papers and articles.


And most interesting part is some results are even wrong!!! I have no clue how they do it but some results are wrong. See in the figure, according to Microsoft Academic Search the first author is a guy from University of Cairo!!! wow!!! Particularly I know the first author of this paper and he has never been in Cairo in his entire life :( Another typical Microsoft product. huh! another bad product!

Norman revisited: Game day

Junks: Motion blur

Norman revisited: Duck pond

What's new?

Not very many things,

I have completed my long cherished Masters and now thinking of PhD. Probably, starting my PhD from this Fall. Not very sure whether I am ready for such a long commitment(!) I am truly afraid of my flickering mind and now even dare of small commitments. At this point I am not very sure how good it would be to consider such a long commitment. Anyway I moving forward who cares what next.

My parents are really insisting me on going back home but I don't feel like. I never enjoyed my life here but the homesickness I had is missing right now. Right now, I am in no man's land. I don't feel like going back home rather I think would love to go somewhere else. Moving to a small town and living a tranquil live is my ever lasting dream. So I am not considering going back home at this point.

I am deliberately looking for the reclusion I had before and hardly manage some. I need some time for myself. Somehow I become very popular which I really don't want to be. I need to find a way.

Just got back from a trip to Vegas. It was okay but really missed Hasib and Rassel. Planning a trip to Colorado sometime this month. I think that's it. I am really trying hard to make my life little less boring.

DEMS: A Data Mining Based Technique to Handle Missing Data in Mobile Sensor Network Applications

In Mobile Sensor Network (MSN) applications, sensors move to increase the area of coverage and/or to compensate for the failure of other sensors. In such applications, loss or corruption of sensor data, known as the missing sensor data phenomenon, occurs due to various reasons, such as power outage, network interference, and sensor mobility. A desirable way to address this issue is to develop a technique that can effectively and efficiently estimate the values of the missing sensor data in order to provide timely response to queries that need to access the missing data. There exists work that aims at achieving such a goal for applications in static sensor networks (SSNs), but little research has been done for those in MSNs, which are more complex than SSNs due to the mobility of mobile sensors. In this paper, we propose a novel data mining based technique, called Data Estimation for Mobile Sensors (DEMS), to handle missing data in MSN applications. DEMS mines the spatial and temporal relationships among mobile sensors with the help of virtual static sensors. DEMS converts mobile sensor readings into virtual static sensor readings and applies the discovered relationships on virtual static sensor readings to estimate the values of the missing sensor data. We also present the experimental results using both real life and synthetic datasets to demonstrate the efficacy of DEMS in terms of data estimation accuracy.

In DMSN' 2010

Grand canyon

It is hard to explain why Grand canyon is so amazing unless you be there. Mountain is something which amazes me all the time and Grand canyon with its color made me speech less. Here is something I need to share that I learned from my mistakes of Grand canyon trip.

1. Plan for at least seven days, this is so amazing place it is hard to see everything in short period of time. If you are planning for less than that all you can do is some photo session. If "be there, done that" is you intention then probably you can finish it up by few hours. But my recommendation is plan for at least seven days, find a quite place and try to feel the color and vastness of this awful mother nature's creation.

2. Don't make any arrangement to stay in a hotel. Staying at hotel is waste of money and time. You have to travel a lot back and forth. Make an arrangement for camping and that's the way you can enjoy the grand creation. And of course make some plan for hiking, Grand canyon trip without hiking is incomplete. Find a camping place near the Colorado river and spend some time. The quieter the place the better it would be. If you are in a group fix time to be alone.

3. Renting is a car is not a good option but I don't know about good public transportation. But surely if you rent a car left it somewhere before the camping. Grand canyon national park has some arrangements for parking and they are often very full. I recommend public transportation (if you have any).

4. Try to visit as many places as you can by walking (hiking). Do not drive, it is waste of your time. It is around 110F during summer with extremely low humid, so carry as much water as you can. Following the trails for hiking is a safe option but if you are little bit adventurous, you can do more than that.

5. It is really difficult to find food in Grand canyon area, so make some arrangement about the food beforehand. I would recommend light foods but you can carry some heavy meals and waste as less as possible time for food.

6. Skywalk is one of a kind engineering work, if you can appreciate its extreme engineering make a plan to visit there. If you have acrophobia then surely you would enjoy Skywalk. Either you have to have acrophobia or you have to have some knowledge about engineering to appreciate Skywalk otherwise it is a complete waste of money for you.

7. Finally try to avoid crowd. Scenic and crowd does not go together. I would recommend going to Grand canyon all alone and be there all alone is the best option.

I hope I covered all you need to know before you plan for Grand canyon. It's a one of a kind place and be there before your end. It is perfectly capable of changing your perspective.