Safety Measures while making online payments

Just gave a general talk on digital payments and safety measures. Thought would put them here…..

Safety Measures to be taken while using Credit/debit card

Identity theft

Some one can spoof your identity and gain access over your account. He might have known your password or your personal information through which he could reset your password.

Credit card / debit card /online banking

Some one must have got your PIN number, password in addition to your card number.. A few cards are also cloned. Phishing is one popular attack. An SMS or email or whatsapp message is sent with a link placed in it. That link when clicked would take you to web site where you are forced to feed information. Sometimes malware gets inserted in your computer or mobile through which important information can be stolen or deleted. Sometimes phone calls are made asking for information like credit card number, PIN, passwords etc on the pretext that you have won an award or got a lucky draw. This is called Vishing. Skimming is another technique through which credit card numbers are acquired either through copies of receipts or through small electronic devices. Never fill forms of lucky draw in malls.

Sometimes people come to you offering help in feeding information in ATM counters. Do not believe them. See that there are no strange devices connected to the ATM machine.

Keep changing your PIN frequently, do not expose last three digits of your card. Register your phone number and keep checking your transactions.

When a vendor swipes your card, keep an eye on him, an be present at the machine when transaction happens.

Use https web site for transactions and see the stamp that the web site is trusted.

Report immediately if you lost the card. Never throw the card after you get a new card. You tear it of into pieces. When you do online banking, don’t forget to log off.

Do not use unknown computers and free wifi to access your online account.

 

 

 

 

Atal Tinkering Labs (11->6->1)

NITI Aayog-Atal Tinkering Labs – Ranking and Progress (2016-2018)
S.No. State Spell – I,II,III             (2016-2017) Rank (2016-2017)    2017- 2018   Spell 1 Rank 2017-2018   Spell 2 Rank Overall Centres Over All Rank
1 Andhra Pradesh 33 11 131 6 269 1 433 2
2 Andaman and Nicobar Island 33 19 23 19 31
3 Arunachal Pradesh 8 28 6 26 19 24 33 24
4 Assam 27 16 29 18 169 9 225 13
5 Bihar 31 13 27 17 32 21 90 19
6 Chandigarh 17 20 23 8 32 25 27
7 Chhattisgarh 30 15 56 13 153 10 239 12
8 Dadra and Nagar Haveli 0 2 34 2 34
9 Delhi 55 4 45 10 125 13 225 13
10 Goa 10 23 1 29 9 31 20 30
11 Gujarat 49 7 71 8 130 12 250 10
12 Haryana 33 12 62 11 91 15 186 15
13 Himachal Pradesh 14 21 15 21 47 18 76 20
14 Jammu and Kashmir 11 22 24 20 15 26 50 22
15 Jharkhand 10 24 35 19 64 17 109 17
16 Karnataka 46 8 131 4 133 11 310 6
17 Kerala 41 9 172 1 222 3 435 1
18 Madhya Pradesh 50 6 103 7 219 4 372 5
19 Maharashtra 77 3 116 2 196 5 389 4
20 Manipur 9 25 7 24 35 20 51 21
21 Meghalaya 8 28 3 27 11 29 22 28
22 Mizoram 4 31 7 28 15 27 26 26
23 Nagaland 3 32 6 30 10 30 19 31
24 Odisha 17 19 90 9 171 8 278 8
25 Puducherry 5 30 2 32 14 28 21 29
26 Punjab 37 10 41 14 79 16 157 16
27 Rajasthan 23 17 69 12 172 7 264 9
28 Sikkim 9 26 30 19 25 28 25
29 Tamil Nadu 81 2 90 5 224 2 395 3
30 Telangana 31 14 29 16 179 6 239 12
31 Tripura 9 27 7 25 2 33 18 33
32 Uttar Pradesh 88 1 98 3 95 14 281 7
33 Uttarakhand 21 18 7 22 22 22 50 23
34 West Bengal 51 5 17 15 41 19 109 17

Diminishing boundaries: Male dominated jobs

Feeling drowsy… I was in my own world . Lot of crowd around, but nothing was getting into my head. Just then, came an announcement. Flight Number …. From… to.. is ready for boarding.. Passengers are requested to …. A known passage in a sweet voice… like Twinkle Twinkle Little star….. Collected my hand baggage, sincerely walked through the boarding gate, got into bus and then to the air craft. Nothing seemed to be interesting. It was becoming monotonous. I just returned from a hectic one week schedule yesterday and today I am off for another assignment. Just when I was getting into my seat, noticed one young lady in airlines uniform and a radium jacket. I just stretched back and slipped into a quiet nap. After about 30 minutes or so with the announcement of turbulence, I noticed the young lady sitting by my side going through her notebook with great concentration.

Being a teacher myself, I just stared curiously into her book. DC motor… Fan…Loop…conversion and words that sounded familiar. I remember these as an ECE student who worked very hard for Electrical machines Lab taught by a strict teacher named Mr Atcha Rao : ) about 30 years ago. Thought she was a BTech in Electrical or Mechanical and was preparing for her exams while doing a job with the airlines.

Looked interesting…

I asked her, what was she doing. She was an Aircraft Maintence Engineer and that was the checklist and she is into repair and overhaul! Amazing. She pursued AME from Coimbatore and works as an Engineer in the Airlines. They were three ladies among twenty engineers employed in their unit.

When asked how she felt, she said she had great satisfaction and was capable of doing more given a chance and had there been no gender bias. Same problem is every where I said to myself. Ladies are stepping up the ladder generation by generation to enjoy the rights and freedom of choice. But every step poses a challenge to be overcome in her life.

-Getting eligible qualifications to work
-Getting an opportunity to work
-Getting equal opportunity in work to take up a good assignment
-Getting stable, up in the ladder for good amount of time to deliver what she envisioned

Yes, many girls who take up the so called manly jobs are capable of doing more than what they are assigned. There was an interesting discussion for the remaining flight time.

She mentioned a particular airline openly says ‘No Ladies’ for Engineer jobs, though they give equal importance in the routine jobs. And that thinking and attitude must change. She preferred Engine replacement and other assignments when compared to on flight inspections as that would make her more competent and confident in handling the engines.

Well just then the aircraft halted and an announcement was made to offboard, she stood up straight… shook hands with me and said ‘Auntie bye, nice talking to you’ and hurriedly went towards exit.

I collected my hand baggage and stepped down the staircase and looked around for her. Yes, as expected she was busy peeping into the engine part of the plane!

It was a pleasure seeing young girl doing technical work that too differently and coolly.

I wish more girls get into this like her and the society gives
-her an equal opportunity
-to hone up her skills in the technical actuals and
-gives her a flying career
-of her choice and
-to her satisfaction.

Best wishes Sharmila…!

Collaborations and Convergence of smart solutions

While several people are coming out with wonderful solutions to help societies, the real impact can happen only if there is convergence of solutions through collaborative efforts of several stake holders.

This article attempts to aggregate various challenges faced and solutions sought by governments and societies.

Some of the focus sectors are:

  • Water
  • Environment
  • Infrastructure
  • Energy
  • Waste Management
  • Security
  • Health care

Some of the important challenges:

Air pollution:  13 of the top 20 polluted cities are in India. Air pollution slashes life expectancy. Air quality monitoring, Air quality assessment, air quality modelling and forecasting, noise and traffic modelling and forecasting are some of the interesting challenges that need to be taken up. Solutions that provide real time air quality information, location specific pollution concentration and the related sources in the background that are the possible causes, providing alert when there is deterioration of air quality, remote analysis of air quality collecting data from various sources are several other topics of interest.

Noise Pollution:Measurements of urban noise, impact of noise in the surroundings, noise due to traffic are immediately required.

Rivers Polluted: The Ganga and Yamuna are ranked among the world’s 10 most polluted rivers. Water quality monitoring, water quality assessment, water quality modelling and forecasting are a few challenges immediately need to be solved. Parameters like-Dissolved oxygen, pH levels, turbidity, total suspended solids, pH levels, chlorine, Total organic carbon etc.  are to be measured regularly. Accommodating multiple sensors and transmitting data will be required. Various sources that can be considered are: dams, rivers, ground water, tanks and canals and desalination.

In addition, water treatment plants, reservoirs, distribution of water in urban and local bodies and waste water management are some additional spots where solutions will be required.

Summary dash boards with drill down facility location wise, quality and quantity wise must be provided.

Predictive water quality analysis and alerts based on the organisations interests are another important topic.

Flood prediction and assessment: collection of  data like soil texture, land cover and topographical data to generate simulations, Assessing hydrological impact of urbanisation spatially, calculation of additional runoff and loss of ground water recharge, identification of problem zones in urban areas, assessing the impact, web visualisation flood predictions are the need of the hour.

Rise in temperatures: Reduction of green belts and real estate increase have raised the temperatures.

Ground water recharge: Reduction of green cover has brought down shrinking of rechargeable areas.

Infrastructure Management: Infrastructure quality monitoring, infrastructure assessment, infrastructure modelling and forecasting. Several tasks like monitoring conditions of buildings, bridges, roads and large infrastructure assets and offering asset management and maintenance services.

Waste management: Waste to energy technologies, waste water treatment, waste segregation services. The solutions should collect from sources, transport waste, do composting and materials recovery, provide safe disposal of inert and hazardous materials. In addition solutions for waste to energy conversion, waste to impactful things making would help. Waste water treatment is another important task.

Land use & Urban planning: Building information systems, land use assessment, urban planning and urban heat modelling, resource consumption assessment. Movement of people and detection of bottle necks, pedestrian movements, drivers, cyclists, maintenance staff, provide heat and acoustic maps for urban spaces and buildings, provide visualisation of the structures in detail with overall and individual views of a structure, visual updating and monitoring of the deadlines during the construction. Model use of land, modeling the use over a time period, model growth patterns for population and habitation, Provide support for urban planning- analyse sources of urban heat , trapping radiation between buildings,  lack of vegetation. Assess impact on human health, transportation systems and energy consumption, provide real time evaluation and warning systems.

Smart solutions to enhance energy efficiency of buildings: window films to increase natural indoor lighting, energy less skylight redistribution, energy management software, smart lighting, Biometric RFID based Access Control

Water pipeline maintenance: Coating to improve the life of existing pipes, coating can also fix broken or cracked pipe sections, reduction in costs and collateral damage to infrastructure.

Tracking buried assets: Should map drainage pathways, identify blockages, and monitor water levels

Energy: Energy distribution systems modelling, energy consumption analysis, thermal energy system modelling, battery management systems.

Analyse energy technology systems to provide advice to decision makers regarding energy planning policies, builds forecast with multiple objectives: cost, energy consumption, resource consumption, emissions etc, life cycle analysis of industry.

Optimisation of thermal energy systems, identify areas of thermal energy wastage, assess excess energy opportunities, district heating and cooling and economic modelling.

Energy mapping: Energy production, consumption and distribution. Determine energy demand, installed and potential energy production, types of energy (wind, coal, solar etc), sectors using energy (commercial , industry, transportation etc.)

Improve energy storation: hybrid buses and cars, railway transport, aerospace and marine applications

Smart Mobility & ICT: Smart Parking, CCTV monitoring & Facial Recognition, health care, data aggregation and analytics, traffic monitoring and real time diversion of traffic.

Public transport system: Automated fare collection and revenue management system, video surveillance system, automatic GPS based vehicle location systems, POS for smart cards. Establishing command control centres. E-tolling stations, automatic vehicle classification, lane detection, automated vehicle tracking systems, speed limit control system, alcohol monitoring for drivers, report vehicles to police database.

CCTV monitoring: Automated Number Plate Recognition System, Face Recognition

Real Time Public Notification: Variable Message Signage: Contextual and Variable Message signage that can offer the following information on a real time basis to citizens travelling on roadways and public areas:  congestion update, crime update, event update, weather update, direction signage

Smart Parking and Parking Solutions: Smart parking for on street and off street locations, solutions for identification, reservation and payment for parking services, complete engagement from contractors to attenders, parking management, boom barrier, solution to track and manage parking.

Connected Health care: Smart health solutions like remote health monitoring devices and mobile applications, wearables that track and manage vital health statistics and activity of the user, personalised health care and remote diagnostics.

International Innovation Fair 2017

Summary of the PROCEEDINGS OF IIIF2017

9th – 11th  SEPTEMBER 2017, Taj Gateway, Visakhapatnam

 This India International Innovation Fair was hosted by   Government of Andhra Pradesh through AP Innovation Society. IFIA- International Federation of Inventors Association has supported it through connecting us with Innovators Associations in around 100 countries across the world. The Fair has attracted 75 participants from 30 countries other than India. In all we had 300 delegates from within India and more than 5000 visitors for the stalls.

In addition to IFIA, APCTT of ESCAP has conducted a workshop in  parallel to the Fair.

IIIF 2017 is an event planned to outreach  innovators from a wide spectrum of domains and capabilities varying from schools to colleges to researchers in institutes and organisations to inventors from villages and startups.

The session started with CEO, AP Innovation Society welcoming the guests.

IIA  was the local partner for APIS  for organising the event. It’s President Dr A.S.Rao, announced the agenda and said this initiative would help create employment through creating new enterprises. .Mr Krishnan Srinivasa Raghavan, APCTT described the role of their UN body stressing that promoting innovation is as important as creating innovation.

Highlights:
The Visakhapatnam event was announced globally in 100 countries by global networks- IFIA and APCTT of ESCAP.
Global participation of 75 from 30 countries.
300 innovations exhibited. Wide range of participation from school children (Young scientists), grass root innovators, engineering students and startups.
International workshop held by UN Organization- APCTT of ESCAP, first time in partnership with a state government.
CCS Hackathon organized as parallel event.
Awareness and excitement created in the state on Innovations.
5000 visitors in 3 days.
Visakhapatnam and Andhra Pradesh are now on radar of global innovation networks.

The event was inaugurated by IFIA President, Alireza Rastegar. He also released the NCSTC magazine containing articles published by young scientists.

Citizen centric Services Hackathon was conducted in parallel at Sunrise Incubation, IT Hill No 3, Rushikonda. Around 600 registrations were done, of which 300 were filtered for hackathon from around 40 colleges. District Collector, Sri Praveen Kumar was kind enough to grace the inaugural. Jury from NIC and ITAAP helped in judging the best solutions. The local Vizag startups community partnered with us to conduct the event.
For Video click here
 Supporting Innovative Entrepreneurs and Role of Technology Transfer , an international workshop was organised by APCTT of ESCAP.
There were around 200 participants from educational institutions, research and development institutions, small and medium enterprises, grass root innovators and entrepreneurs. This workshop also had international participants including senior representatives from                           APCTT’s partner, organisations in India, Indonesia, Islamic Republic of Iran, Kazakhstan countries in Middle-East, Europe and Philippines. The aim is to boost awareness on the support mechanisms available for innovative entrepreneurs and share finest practices in cross border technology transfer from countries in the Asia Pacific region and beyond. It also focused on opportunities and challenges for technology commercialization, effective management of intellectual property rights, establishing and sustaining cross-border cooperation on technology transfer and sharing policy frameworks for technology transfer and innovation led entrepreneurship.
Minister for ITE&C , Mr Nara  Lokesh released the Inaugural issue of International Technology Bazar along with catalogue of the fair, on 9th evening.
Minister for ITE&C, Mr. Lokesh, addressed the gathering and shared the Policy framework of government of Andhra Pradesh to support innovative entrepreneurs.

The deliberations among  the innovators and entrepreneurs helped them  share their experiences and existing policies in their respective states and nations. A possibility of regional cooperation platforms for the future to support knowledge exchange and networking was discussed. The third day had the fair and exhibition open for the public.  There was however an interesting discussion that,  ‘Dr’ is used to represent and recognise doctors and phD holders, and Er to recognise engineers in few countries. But,  a system that recognizes genuine inventors and innovators, who contribute significantly in the knowledge economy and adding to public stock of knowledge was not available any where. Later, it was suggested with a proper alignment with Chartered Innovators Council it may be approved to use the title “Inv” for the inventors and innovators.

 Hon. Chief Minister Sri Nara Chandrababu Naidu gave his remarkable keynote address during the valedictory on the last day and spent nearly four hours with international and Indian Innovators. The National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), DST, GOI signed an agreement of understanding with the AP Innovation Society to help the students and start-ups in the state. IFIA memorial medal was given to Y S Chowdary, Union Minister of State for Science and Technology, which was collected by H Purushotham on his behalf. The IFIA best invention awards were given to Portugal and for Organic Disposable Shaving Brush to Madala Sowjanya from India, which were presented by IFIA President. Hon. Chief Minister presented The Gandhi Memorial Innovation Award to Bahrain, special awards to Raman and Sai Teja for generating International Technology Bazaar portal and gold awards to National and International innovators. At this event Hon. Chief Minister addressed the gathering and expressed his contentment and satisfaction meeting the innovators and inventors, with such positive attitude towards progression.
Above all, it was a wonderful experience and learning . And our state requires more such networking platforms to learn and showcase!

A VERSION CONTROLLED, SELF-ADJUSTING, AND QUALITY OF SERVICE-AWARE LOAD BALANCED CLUSTER

A VERSION CONTROLLED, SELF-ADJUSTING, AND QUALITY OF SERVICE-AWARE LOAD BALANCED CLUSTER

Awarded 2017

VEERABHADRA RAO CHANDAKANNA

Most of the applications that we use today like Gmail, Twitter, and Facebook are Cloud enabled and can scale dynamically. Typically, such applications are hosted on a load balanced cluster. An application accessed via a load balanced cluster is hosted on every member (server) of the cluster. The end user uses a virtual address to send his/her request to a load balancer that acts as an entry point to access the cluster services. The load balancer assigns the request to one of the cluster members. As the load balancer can assign a request to any member of the cluster, all the members must be consistent to produce correct results. A load balancing algorithm attempts to (i) optimize the throughput/response time/resource utilization or (ii) prevent overloading any specific server. The services hosted on the cluster members go through many revisions during their life-cycle. The current solutions are mostly focusing on automating the dynamic scaling, and largely ignored the cluster version management. The key requirements to manage a load balanced cluster are auto provisioning, consistency among the cluster members, a load balancer that can quickly adjust to the changing cluster environment, cluster capacity management, and Quality of Service(QoS) monitoring.

A Self-Adjusting Clustering Framework (SACF) proposed automates the cluster version management, and enforces the consistency among the cluster members. The SACF automates the application management tasks (deploying, upgrading, and retiring) executed in a cluster environment. The framework allows the users to plug-in custom logic to be triggered at various points of managing an application. The framework enforces every active cluster member to be synchronized with the cluster all the time. The framework automatically detects inconsistency of a newly started cluster member and makes the necessary corrections to make it consistent with the current cluster state.

A Sliding window based Self-learning and Adaptive Load balancer (SSAL) that can adapt to both stable and unstable cluster environments is proposed. The SSAL logically divides time into fixed size intervals, assigns the requests in batches, and makes corrections based on the observed servers’ performance in each interval. The SSAL discovers the initial capabilities of the servers and performs incremental corrections needed in the subsequent intervals. It produces throughput better than the current models in both the stable and dynamic cluster environments.

A Quality of Service aware and Self-correcting observation based Load Balancer (QSLB) extends the SSAL to prevent the single point of failure problem, manage cluster capacity, and support QoS monitoring. The QSLB optimizes the throughput and allows (i) redundant QSLBs to collaborate and estimate the cluster members’ capabilities, (ii) the newly started QSLBs to learn the cluster members’ capabilities quickly, (iii) share the cluster capacity among different users in a pre-agreed ratio, and (iv) specify Quality of Service (QoS) benchmarks, monitor the QoS parameters, and recommend changes to meet the set QoS goals. Two cluster capacity estimation models (ARSM and NRPM) to improve the QoS are proposed. Multiple centralized and distributed algorithms to implement the QSLB are proposed and evaluated. This thesis presents a comprehensive approach for managing the load-balanced clusters. The SACF framework provides cluster version management and enforces the consistency among the cluster members. A new observation based load balancer (SSAL) that can produce optimal throughput in both stable and unstable cluster environments has been proposed. The SSAL is extended (as QSLB) to prevent single point of failure, manage the cluster capacity and QoS, and estimate the cluster capacity needed to improve the QoS.