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Rapid Evolution of Web

Volume 4, Issue 3 April 2012

Editors Column

Inside this issue:

Evolution of Web

Project articles Personality Profile Newsflashes Faculty Profile ACM DSP Augmented Reality Asiacup -ACM activities Trsyt-ACM activities Fun Section

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Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance. W3 Consortium, recently standardAutumn passes and one ized HTML5 allowing canvas eleremembers one's reverence. ment to draw graphics elements on Winter passes and one rememthe fly, while scripting. More and bers one's perseverance. more applications are shifting from Startups are undergoing the same web to mobile devices, and recent (Yoko Ono) transformation that technology trends have suggested that these After the harsh Winter, as the does when it becomes cheaper. mobile sites are getting heavy trafSpring gives way to the Sum- Specifically, a lot of web-based fic. Very recently Mozilla released a mer, the semester converges startups are attracting venture fund- version of Firefox with an extra towards vacations. Let us strive ing. Not only are they low on capi- option when looking at a webpages to give our best in this last tal investment, they need very underlying code, the ability to renstretch of the session. A short small teams to build a prototype, der the page in 3D. The resulting refreshing diversion is offered and many of them have been very render will stack different elements by this issue of the newsletter successful in the past five of the page, making it easier to see with its diverse content promis- years. Major mergers & acquisi- the structure of the page and the ing to have something for eve- tions have been seen in the field overall hierarchy. In 2011, a nonvery recently, profit group ryone. all with an end The best way to predict the fu- Khronos proIn this issue, we extend a goal to give posed WebGL, ture is to invent it. hearty welcome to the new users the best a method of faculty, Prof. Parag Singla with browsing exgenerating ~Alan Kay a thought provoking interview. perience dynamic 3D Our theme of innovation con- thereby getting the maximum eye- graphics using JavaScript, accelertinues with a motivating article balls. If people get the right to ated through hardware, that will on the evolution of web and we work in implementing ideas instead enable cross platform web gaming. also take a peek into the future of sitting on them, technology will A part of WebGL code is executed with one of the latest techno- evolve faster. We have seen this on computers GPU, so high-end logical advancements, the happening for web technologies. desktop games are likely to have a With all major browsers shipping browser versions in near future. Google Glasses. multiple versions every year, many Modern web browsers have started The process of expanding both conferences are focusing on the supporting offline web apps, emthe scope and the number of futuristic web applications, launch- ploying a method of defining web activities organized by the pads and keynotes showcasing page files to be cached using a Chapter is accentuated as we latest gadgets. We are definitely cache manifest file, allowing them discuss the Indo-Pak coding eyeing a complete turnaround in to work offline on subsequent visits contest, Tryst Microsoft Ap- the web-o-sphere. The web today is to the page. pathon and much more. a growing universe of interlinked Over the last decade, the focus has web pages and web apps, teeming Our personality profile probeen on the expansion of web, inwith videos, photos, and interactive vides an insight into the life of creasing the existing user base, the content. What the average user George Boole, the father of doesn't see is the interplay of web future lies in creating artificialBoolean Logic. Read on to find technologies and browsers that intelligence apps that interpret data out more about the great re- makes all this possible. Over time, much like humans do, and develop searcher. For some interesting web technologies have evolved to services that work more intuitively fun facts, you can turn to the give web developers the ability to and make it easier for average Intercrossword given in the fun create new generations of useful net users to find what theyre looking for. It will be interesting to section. and immersive web experiences. watch this transition happen. Read on for invigorating facts! Web has moved from mere webpages to features that facilitate in- Only time will tell how it evolves! teroperability, user-centered design and information sharing via colAditi Kapoor, Chief Editor laboration. Today's web is an infor- Contributed by :Akash Khandelwal

Paul Graham, an eminent computer scientist, has discussed in his essay titled The Future of Web Startups, a pattern which we see over and over again in technology. Initially a device that's very expensive is made in small quantities. Then someone discovers how to make it in an inexpensive manner; many more thereby get built; and as a result they can be used in new ways.

mation sharing via collaboration. Today's web is a result of the ongoing efforts of an open web community that helps define web technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and WebGL and ensure that they're supported in all web browsers.

Brought out by ACM STUDENT Chapter

CSE Newsletter

An award winning project article: Scalable content distribution for social networking websites
Amit Ruhela
Student : Amit Ruhela Supervisor : Dr. Aaditeshwar Seth Project Team Members : IIT Delhi : Rudra Mohan Tripathy and Prof. Amitabha Bagchi; NICTA Australia : Sipat Triukose, Sebastien Ardon and Dr. Anirban Mahanti Publication details : Amit Ruhela, Scalable content distribution for social networking websites, Communication Systems and Networks (COMSNETS), 3-7 Jan. 2012, (Best Presentation in PhD Forum) I. Introduction Due to vast increase in internet traffic, it has become extremely difficult for the service providers to efficiently deliver their services to end users while keeping good QoS. Therefore, end users often experience problems like high latency, low throughput, and services outages. To minimize user perceived latency, we require selective replication techniques that decide efficiently about which contents should be replicated when and where. The prior work on content replication has mainly focused on replicating the popular UGC at various geographical locations but the changing nature of content from broadcast to UGC indicates that different mechanisms may be needed for more accurate placement prediction of user generated content. In our work, we aim to study various predictors which are extracted from online social networks for proposing an efficient replication strategy. We believe that our study will assist in the design of better recommender systems, and reveal interesting topics diffusion patterns on online social networking websites. II. Contributions We have used Twitter OSN for studying various predictors. Our dataset contain information collected from five different resources. We first use the spatial information of each twitter account to study how topics spread geographically over time. The Fig. 1 (a) shows that the UGC popularity peaks at different times in different timezones. From spatial patterns, we believe that event occurrences at the the plots shown in Fig. 2, we believe that the content placement strategies should use the periodicity and growth patterns of topics to predict their future demand; stability and decay patterns of topics to either uphold or evict the related UGC from the content caches. Third, we study the social network information of content producers to predict the locations of content demand. From Fig. 1(b), we observe that the topics which are discussed by few users, hold high social cohesion (social relations) between their producers. The social network of niche topic producers can be used to predict users who will be interested in the topic, and consequently their locations can reveal the geographies where demand would arise in the future. III. Conclusions The above predictors extracted from online social networks suggest the design of content placement strategy like follows: use semantic information about the topic to assess what class the temporal growth of the topic would belong, use time-zone information to predict when a particular content would become popular in some other geographies, and use social network predictors for niche content in priority to geographical predictors. We are currently running more extensive tests to confirm our hypotheses about geographical, temporal, and social predictors for content distribution. We will then subsequently design distributed algorithms that can coordinate the placement of UGC on content delivery networks.
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origin sites can decide when to replicate UGC in other parts of the world. We next study how topic popularity changes over time. We have classified all the topics of our dataset in multiple classes on basis of periodicity, stability, growth, and decay patterns. From

An interesting project article: Determining the Configuration of a Host Through its Virtual Machines
Shikhar Agarwal
Student : Shikhar Agarwal Supervisor : Dr. Sorav Bansal Publication details : S. Agarwal, S. Bansal, "Determining the Configuration of a Host Through its Virtual Machines" Workshop in Virtualization and Cloud Computing (WIVCC) 2012 Introduction In this project, we develop methods to determine the actual physical resources of the Virtual Machines provided by a Cloud Service Provider like Amazon through running workloads inside the Virtual Machines. Our method allows a customer of a service provider to verify that he is being given the promised resources or not, i.e., this can help verify the Service Level Agreements. It also allows competing service providers to gauge each others physical resources. The Cloud Service Providers do not give the details of their actual physical resources, and hence their determination could lead to new security threats and thus allows these providers to take necessary steps beforehand. Our tool estimates the number and type of physical machines in the Cloud by spawning multiple VMs and running workloads inside them. The workload stresses a particular component of the machine to gain information about it. For eg, to determine the number of CPUs of the Host, we run compute intensive benchmarks on all the VMs on that host. Similar is the case for memory. An important capability to determine physical resources is to determine if two VMs are coresident on a single physical host. We first present some strategies to detect coresidency. Some of these strategies are network based using scp latencies and other relevant outputs of tools like iperf; another strategy involves running cache intensive bench- 5. mark and exploiting the fact that L2 cache is shared between the VMs. Yet another important strategy is based on the page sharing by the Linux KSM module between the VMs. Having determined coresidency VMs, our tool then determines the memory size, and the number of cores per host. We presented results on our experiments conducted on two setups - our own private lab setup for testing, and Baadal, IIT-Delhis internal cloud service at the IIT-B Workshop. array. A lot of page faults indicates that KSM had marked them COW and hence these 2 VMs are coresident. Determining the number of cores/ Memory Size of the host: i.) Run memory intensive workload on a VM and note down the execution time. ii.) Spawn coresident VMs and simultaneously run the same workload on each and note down the running time iii.) Repeat step ii until a large jump in the execution time as derived in step i is observed. Note down the number of VMs, say n. iv.) Memory size of the host in GB = ceiling (sum of previous n - 1 VMs memories in GB).

Methodology The basic methodology can be explained by the following algorithm: Results We note that co-resident VMs have a 1. Determining coresidency of VMs lower latenciesas compared to resi2. ping: We ping one VM from andent VMs. other and note down the latency. It is observed that co-resident VMs A very low latency indicates inhave larger execution time when a ternal routing by kvm and hence cache-intensive benchmark is run on coresidency. The execution time of memory3. Running cache intensive benchintensive benchmark jumps when we marks : We run cache intensive have 4 coresident VMs of 0.5 GB benchmarks on 2 VMs. As cache memory each. Hence by the methodis shared (L2), if these are coresiology and formula we discussed, we dent, then it would take more say that the host has 2 GB memory. time for execution than a single The execution time of computeVM alone would take. intensive benchmark jumps when we 4. KSM Page sharing: KVM's KSM have 3 coresident VMs of 1 core module shares identical memory each. Hence by the methodology we pages. Here 2 VMs make identiadopted, we say that the host has 2 cal arrays and read from them so cores. that KSM shares these pages. Then one of them writes to its

The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, nineteenth-century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, flower arranging, and hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later or six months, or six years down the road. But he has faith that it will happen." ~Carl Ally
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Personality Profile : George Boole


In 1838, Boole took over the charge of Halls Academy in Waddington, when Robert Hall died. Soon, he even opened a boarding school of his own. By 1844 he was concentrating on the uses of combined algebra and calculus to process infinitely small and large figures, and, in that same year, received a Royal Society medal for his contributions to analysis. Boole's 1847 work, 'The Mathematical Analysis of Logic', argued that logic was principally a discipline of mathematics, rather than philosophy. It was this paper that won him, not only the admiration of the distinguished logician Augustus de Morgan, but a place on the faculty of Ireland's Queen's College. About Boole, De Morgan wrote : one approach.He came up with a type of linguistic algebra, with which we are all too familiar, the three most basic operations of which were (and still are) AND, OR and NOT. It was these three functions that formed the basis of his premise, and were the only operations necessary to perform comparisons or basic mathematical functions. Booles predecessors had tried to force the algebra of real numbers onto logic, and since they had not envisaged a plurality of algebras, it was believed that only if the elementary properties of the symbols implied formal rules identical with those of the algebra of real numbers could the subject be regarded as a valid part of mathematics. Boole recognized that he had created a new branch of mathematics.

George Boole was a mathematician who helped in establishing modern symbolic logic. The design of modern digital computer circuits is based on his algebra of logic called Boolean AlgeBoole was a great mathematibra. He was born in the English Probability is expectation founded upon partial cian, and an even better teacher. town of Lincoln, Lincolnshire, knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the He was dedicated to his profesEngland on 2 November, 1815. His sion, which ultimately proved circumstances affecting the occurrence of an father was a cobbler by profession. fatal. Boole's life was cut short His family being too poor to send event would change expectation into certainty, him to school, Boole taught him- and leave neither room nor demand for a theory when he died of a 'feverish cold' at the age of 49, after walking 2 self five languages and learned of probabilities. miles through the rain to get to mathematics from his father. Inclass and then lecturing in wet ~George Boole. fact, by the age of 14, he had beclothes (proving, once again, come so skilled in Greek that it that genius and common sense provoked an argument. He transsometimes have a less than nodlated a poem by the Greek poet Meleager I can speak confidently to the fact of ding acquaintance.) which his father was so proud of that he his being not only well-versed in the had it published. However the talent was highest branches of mathematics, but such that a local schoolmaster disputed possessed of original power for their that any 14 year old could have written extension which gives him a very re- Sources with such depth! spectable rank among their English Boole did not study for an academic cultivators of this day. 1. h t t p : / / w w w. g a p - s ys t e m . or g / degree, but from the age of 16 he was an Boole was married to Mary Everest ~history/Biographies/Boole.html assistant school teacher at Heigham's (niece of Sir George Everest, after School in Doncaster. This was rather whom the mountain is named). The 2. http://www.kerryr.net/pioneers/ boole.htm forced on him since his father's business difference in their ages was immense, collapsed and he found himself having to but they had a happy marriage, the 3. http://www.philosopherzone.com/ support financially his parents, brothers testimonial to which is the fact that george-boole-quotes/ and sister. He maintained his interest in they had 5 daughters. 4. http://www.sciencephot o.com/ languages, began to study mathematics media/223560/enlarge seriously, and gave up ideas which he Boole's system (detailed in his 'An had to enter the Church. In 1833 he Investigation of the Laws of Thought, moved to a new teaching position in on Which Are Founded the MatheLiverpool but he only remained there for matical Theories of Logic and Probsix months. In 1834 he opened his own abilities', 1854) was based on a binary Compiled by : Aayush Goel school in Lincoln although he was only approach, processing only two objects - the yes-no, true-false, on-off, zero19 years old.
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Department News Flash


I. Visitors ferentiation, IEEE WISARD 2012.
st

Dr. Yuvraj Agarwal ,UC San Diego, 1 November 2011

Dr. Saurabh Amin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1st November 2011 Amit Merchant, IBM, 14th November 2011 Subhojit Roy, , 14th November 2011 Dr. Anirban Dasgupta, Yahoo! Labs, 1st December 2011 Dr. Roopak Sinha, INRIA, France, 7th December 2011 Lasse Kliemann, Univ of Kiel, December 2011 21st

Pravesh Biyani, Shankar Prakriya, Surendra Prasad and Amitabha Bagchi., Dynamic programming based multi-user resource allocation for partial crosstalk cancellation in VSDL, IEEE Communications Letters 16(3):420-423, 2012. Amit Ruhela, Rudra Mohan Tripathy, Sipat Triukose, Sebastien G. Ardon, Amitabha Bagchi and Aaditeshwar Seth. Towards the use of Online Social Networks for Efficient Internet Content Distribution .In Proceedings of the 5th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Networks and Telecommunication Systems (ANTS '11) , December 2011, pp. 1-6.

munity Radio Automation System in India, ACM DEV, 2012

A. Mahla, D. Martin, I. Ahuja, Q. Niyaz, and A. Seth., Motivation and Design of a Content Distribution Architecture for Rural Areas, ACM DEV, 2012 Z. Koradia and A. Seth. Phonepeti:Exploring the Role of an Answering Machine System in a Community Radio Station in India, ICTD 2012 S. Nagar, A. Seth., Characterization of Social Media Response to Natural Disasters, INSNA Sunbelt Social Networks Conference, 2012

Rohit Chadha, LSV, Ecole Normale Superieur, Cachan, Paris, France, 22nd December 2011 Ankit Sharma, CMU, 10th January 2012 Raj Saxena, Enterpriseforce,11 January 2012 Prof. Ioannis A. Kakadiaris, Depts. of Computer Science and ECE, U. of Houston, 17th January 2012 Prof Robert Meersman, VUB STARLab Brussels, Belgium, 18th January 2012 Dr.Victor Hayes, Delft University, 27th January 2012 Dr. Gene Frantz, TI, 30th January 2012 Sharad Goel, Yahoo Research, 6th February 2012 Prof. Michael Werman, Department of Computer Science, Hebrew University, Jerusalem ,10th February 2012 Dr. Leo Liberti, thLIX, Ecole Polytechnique, France, 13 February 2012 Nirman Kumar, UIUC, 2012 21st February
th

Amit Ruhela , Scalable content distribution for social networking websites,Communication Systems and Networks (COMSNETS), 2012 Fourth International Conference on , vol., no., pp.1-2, 3-7, Jan. 2012
Aditi Kapoor, Parul Pandey and K. K. Biswas, Fuzzy rule based document image segmentation for component labeling, accepted for presentation at NCVPRIPG, Nat. Conf. on Vision, Pattern Re cogniti on, Ima ge P r oc. an d Graphics, Dec 15 17, 2011, Hubli.

S. Chouhan, M. Balakrishnan, R. Bose, System-Level Design Space Exploration Methodology for Energy-Efficient Sensor Node Configurations: An Experimental Validation , IEEE TCAD, Vol. 31 , No. 4, 2012 , pp 586 - 596
Abhishek Gupta, Jatin Kumar, Daniel J Mathew, Sorav Bansal, Subhashis Banarjee and Huzur Saran., Design and Implementation of the Workflow of an Academic Cloud, Presented at Second Workshop on Issues in Virtualization and Cloud Computing, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay, 2011 Shikhar Agarwal and Sorav Bansal, Determining the Configuration of a Host Through its Virtual Machines., Presented at Second Workshop on Issues in Virtualization and Cloud Computing, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay, 2011 Aashish Mittal, Dushyant Bansal, Sorav Bansal (IIT Delhi) and Varun Sethi (Freescale Semiconductor). , Lightweight Adaptive Binary Translation for Virtualization on Embedded Power architecture Platforms, Presented at Second Workshop on Issues in Virtualization and Cloud Computing, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay , 2011 Mohamed Yahya, Klaus Berberich,

Yamuna Prasad and K. K. Biswas, Fuzzy-Rough based Regularization in Generalized Multiple Kernel Learning, (accepted for presentation at FSKD 12, Chongqing, China, May 29-31, 2012). Manish Agrawal, K.K.Biswas and M. Ha n m an dl u,, Pr oba bi l i st i c Intuitionistic Fuzzy Rule Based Controller, accepted for presentation at IEEE ICARA, 5th Int. Conf. on Automation, Robotics and Applications, Dec 68, 2011, Wellington , New Zealand.
K.K. Biswas, S.K. Basu, Gesture Recognition using Microsoft Kinect, accepted for presentation at IEEE ICARA, 5th Int. Conf. on Automation, Robotics and Applications, Dec 6 8, 2011, Wellington, New Zealand. Z. Koradia, Balachandran C, K. Dadheech, M. Shivam, and A. Seth, Experiences of Deploying and Commercializing a Com-

Dr. Simon Kramer, University of Luxembourg, 7th March 2012 Dr. Amitabh Trehan, Information Systems, Faculty of IE & M, Technion, Haifa, Israel, 14th March 2012 Prof. Rakesh Verma, University of Houston, 16th March 2012 Prof. Aviral Shrivastava, Arizona State Universit y , 23tdMarch 2012

II. Publications A. Chawla, V. Yadav, V. D. Sharma, J. Bajaj, E. Nanda, V. Ribeiro, and H. Saran, RODEO: Robust and Rapidly Deployable TDM Mesh with QoS, Dif-

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Department News Flash (continued )


Shady Elbassuoni, Maya Ramanath, Volker Tresp and Gerhard Weikum Deep Answers for Naturally Asked Questions on the Web of Data (demo), Proc. of the World Wide Web Conference (WWW), 2012 and Gerhard Weikum, Harmony and Dissonance: Organizing the Peoples Voices on Political Controversies, Proc. of the ACM Conf. on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM), 2012 III Awards Aaditeshwar Seth, has been awarded the best presentation in the COMSNETS 2012 PhD forum for his work on online social networks and Internet content distribution.

Ruhela, PhD student of Dr

Rawia Awadallah, Maya Ramanath

Amit

Sandeep Kumar Bindal wins third prize at PLDI SRC 2011 in the Undergraduate Category.

Faculty Profile : Dr. Parag Singla


came better over time. I was quite interested in academics, especially theoretical/ mathematical courses. That period was also very interesting because of the learning it involved and making friends. You learn not just about academics but also about life. Professors were also very helpful and interactive. IITs are supposed to have world class faculty and I felt it to be absolutely true. They would share their experiences of having gone through a similar process. Having studied abroad, they would also give an insight into that life. I remember asking them why they came back to IIT and the chances of getting a faculty position at IIT if we came back. Along with studies, I was also involved in various co-curricular activities (though sometimes I feel that I could have been even more involved without adversely affecting my CGPA :)). I was active in a group called GRA (Group for Rural Activities). It was a group where we tried to understand how to carry knowledge we get at IIT and use it to help the masses. We had a rural trip at the end of every semester. That used to be very enlightening. We also used to teach children in surrounding slums. Q.4. What created a passion for Machine learning in you? Ans. 4. I started off with my research work in databases and information retrieval during my undergrad. The passion for machine learning arose through an AI course that I took at the University of Washington. Fortunately, I had the flexibility to switch my research areas. I approached Professor Pedro Domingos (who is one of the world experts in the area and later on became my advisor) to give me some reading material on machine learning. The interest grew from there. I was fascinated by the mathematical depth of the area and also the breadth in terms of affecting various disciplines of science (within and without Computer Science). Later on, I became a TA for a Professional Masters course on machine learning/data mining offered by my advisor. All the reading and the teaching experience gave me enough background to pursue my research in machine learning.

Q.1. Please take us through your career journey Ans. 1. I come from a small place in Haryana where I did my schooling up to class 10. I then went on to do my class 11th and 12th from DPS R. K. Puram. I sometimes feel that the biggest transition in whole of my career/studies was coming from a small town to Delhi. Eventually I got an opportunity to study in Bombay and then in US too. But I still feel that this was the biggest change. I went to IIT Bombay for my undergrad. Next I did my masters and PhD at the University of Washington, Seattle. I did my Ph.D. in machine learning. After finishing up my PhD, I did a post-doc for a couple of years at University of Texas, Austin. I moved back to India in September 2011. I have been at IIT Delhi as an assistant professor since last December.

Q.5. How was the transition from UG to PG and PhD? Ans. 5. Academically it was pretty smooth. The credit for that goes to the IIT system. It equipped us in such a way that I was not at a disadvantage coming from India. I didnt find any problem in the level of the courses. In terms of social environment of course it was different. You start a new existence. You manage everything on your own, cook your own food etc. People there understand it can be very different. But it helps to have people from India, even from IITs etc. Theres a really large Indian community. One interesting thing was that I realized that you value Indian culture, festivals, food etc more when you are outside India. At least it happened to me.

Q.3. How did you get interested in Computer Science as a career? Ans. 3. I was always very interested in Mathematics and Science. In Science, the interest was mostly in Physics and partly in Chemistry. I had also studied Computers in class 11 and 12 which I found suiting to my interests. All these interests combined together along with a good rank in JEE helped me make the CS choice. At that time, it might not have been a very informed decision, but I always cherish it in the hindsight.

Q.2. Please share some enlightening experiences as a student at IIT Bombay Ans. 2. That was the first time I was so far away from my parents. I used to feel home sick in the beginning but it be-

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Faculty Profile : Dr. Parag Singla (continued...)


Ironically I took an interest even in things like Yoga etc there only for the first time. I even went on to a do a course in Yoga and meditation. Of course research and everything continued but these were some things which I really valued in life. It was an enjoyable, learning experience. Q.6. It seems that you continued for your PhD after your masters. What are the advantages/disadvantages of the same? In your opinion is it better to get experience and come back or continue and complete it in one run? Ans. 6. I wanted to pursue studies to the level that I can. My parents understood the plans which helped avoid the undue pressure of settling down with a job. There are many people in US who do Masters, work and then return back to PhD. It gives a good industry experience and that can add value to your PhD. But sometimes working out the logistics of coming back to studies can be tricky, especially if you have family. A break can also take you away from research depending on the kind of job that you do. So, overall I guess there are advantages and disadvantages. But I am glad that I finished it in one go :) Q.7. What made you decide to come back to India and how has the experience been? Ans.7. I always wanted to come back. As mentioned earlier, I even had a discussion with some of my professors at IIT Bombay about doing a PhD in India. They advised me to be open to alternatives and also to get a wider experience. I did so and found it very fruitful. When you weigh opportunities equally, you realize where your passion is. We had very good interactions with our American colleagues. I made many friends and I learned so much during my stay in US. But my heart always felt for the Indian society. We would always be more interested in knowing about what was happening in India and reading Indian news, than the local happenings. Though my mind did go back and forth on the decision of making a move back home, I did eventually decide to come back. And I am very happy with that decision. And not just being at IIT but also at IIT Delhi. My family is also in Delhi so that is good. I find the atmosphere in the department to be quite conducive to research as well as teaching. Senior colleagues are always ready to help and give guidance. And I have already started collaborating with other faculty in the department. The flexibility of schedule, the kind of research problems that you work on, teaching/ advising students everything is fun and enjoyable as well a great learning experience. Another aspect of the move is, I tend to be very social person and the teaching profession gives you the opportunity to be one. Being a bachelor, I have even joined the hostel mess. Many students find it odd finding a faculty sitting next to them on the dinner table I see students from 1st year whom I teach, students who are TAs with me for the same course and others whom I advise for their Bachelor/Masters projects. So its a good experience. The opportunity to interact with students and faculty alike is great and its great to have people listen to you for more than an hour at a stretch! Q. 8. Please tell us a bit about some of your interests apart from academia. Ans. 8. I am interested in yoga, meditation, reading and Indian classical music (though I am not a good singer:-0). I practice meditation regularly. I am highly inspired by Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhis lives. Theres a quote by Swami Vivekananda which says that whenever we get an opportunity to serve someone, we should feel fortunate. I always try to remember it. Whenever I find time, I try to participate in the activities of a campus based group named AINA An Initiative for Indias National Advancement. They do various activities including teaching slum children and organizing lectures and seminars on various topics of social interest. Q9. Post-doc how is it different from Ph.D., teaching? Ans. 9. As the name itself conveys, its post doctoral research. Its like working with someone as an apprentice who is training you to be a professor. So its a transition from being a student to a professor. Also, its not strictly time bound in terms of completion. Its not a degree like Ph.D. One gets to collaborate with many people and work on several different projects. While I did my postdoc at UT Austin, I also worked with people from University of Rochester. It was a good experience. I think if I had come back right after PhD it would have been a bit harder. When students work under you on various projects, you have to be able to advise them effectively. It is very different from working on a single problem during your PhD. I guess it comes with experience. Post-doc can help you train towards this when you work with other students of your supervisor. You can also get teaching experience during a post-doc. Many places allow you to teach a full course. Doing a post-doc did not use to be so common few years back (in Computer Science). But now, many top universities and research labs prefer you to have a post-doc before they offer you full time position. Q.10. Your advice to the students. Ans. 10. Being in a world class institute, you have got the access to the quality education and infrastructure as well as the peer group which can think and reason at the same intellectual level. I would encourage every student to explore how they can be innovative and creative in different ways. One learns the skills to solve problems here of all kinds. Its also important to learn how to tap these skills and contribute back to the society.

Identify your passion and follow it. Sometimes we keep our deeper interests at the back burner and pursue a path which we are not interested in. We then end up not being successful. But that is inevitable since it is not where we wanted to be. Take up a goal that drives you from the very core and work towards it. Being in an intellectually stimulating environment like IIT, one is provided with so many opportunities. Sky is the limit. Utilize the presence of faculty not just for academics but also to learn from their experiences about life. Faculty can also play a more constructive role in this I feel. Compiled by : Aditi Kapoor & Swati Verma
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ACM Distinguished Speaker Program


saves energy by avoiding additional transmissions and computation overhead on the sensor nodes. We have implemented our secure data aggregation algorithms on mica2 motes. About the Speaker: Sanjay is an Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India in 1995. He has published more than 150 Journal and conference papers in the areas of mobile computing, sensor networks, security, XML, and databases in general. He co-authored a book entitled "Web Data Management : A Warehouse Approach" published by Springer-verlag. He guest edited WWW Journal, several Data and Knowledge Engineering Sp. Issues on Web data management and Data warehousing. He won best papers awards in 2010 and 2010 in IEEE conferences. He was founding Program Chair for EC&WEB series of conferences and founding workshop chair IEEE International Workshop on P2P Data Management, Security and Trust since 2003. He served as general co-chair of mobile data management (MDM) conference held in 2010. He is serving as PC member of various database conferences such as VLDB, ICDE, MDM, and reviewer for many reputed database journals such as IEEE TKDE, IEEE Computer, ACM Internet Computing, IEEE TMC etc. Dr. Madria has given tutorials on mobile databases and XML Change Management in many international conferences. He is regular invited panelist in NSF, NSERC (Canada), Hong Kong Research Council and Sweden Council of Research. He received UMR faculty excellence award in 2007, 2009, Japanese Society for Promotion of Science invitational fellowship in 2006, and Air Force Research Lab's visiting faculty fellowships from 2008-2011. His research is supported by grants over $3M from NSF, DOE, Army, AFRL, UM research board, and from industry such as Boeing. He is IEEE Senior Member and also a speaker under ACM as well as IEEE Distinguished Visitor program.
Compiled by : Aditi Kapoor

Speaker:Prof. Sanjay Madria (Missouri University of Science & Technology Title: Secure Data Aggregation in Sensor Networks Abstract: Data aggregation is a technique used to conserve battery power in wireless sensor networks (WSN). When securing such a network, it is important that we minimize the number of computationally expensive security operations without compromising on the security. This talk deals with the test-bed implementation of our end to end secure data aggregation algorithm. Unlike previous algorithms which required separate phases for secure aggregation and integrity verification, ours does not require an additional phase for verification. This

Augmented Reality
With Google announcing Project Glass and setting a fresh wave of frenzy in the minds of every Science Fiction fan, Augmented Reality has come a long way. Augmented Reality blurs the line between what's real and what's computer-generated by enhancing what we see, hear, feel and smell. On the spectrum between virtual reality, which creates immersive, computer-generated environments, and the real world, augmented reality is closer to the real world. Augmented reality (AR) is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computergenerated sensory input. As fascinating as this definition may sound, we going strong and he gets out. You are wondering how much he managed to score because you cant keep count of every run he accumulates. As Sachin walks back to the pavilion, you wonder how much he did score, and the little wide banner that always used to appear until yesterday as any batsman gets out is, somehow, missing today. The little strip at the bottom and the little wide banner constitute AR. Augmented reality is changing the way we view the world -- or at least the way its users see the world. Picture yourself walking or driving down the street. With augmented-reality displays, which will eventually look much like a normal pair of glasses, informative graphics
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have always been surrounded by AR and it is already an integral part of our lifestyle. To elaborate, consider a cricket match being played in Mumbai, and you are watching it on TV in Delhi. Somehow, the little strip that always appears at the bottom of the screen that tells the viewer about the score of the batting team and the number of overs still left in the game is not there today. Sachin is

Augmented Reality
will appear in your field of view, and audio will coincide with whatever you see. These enhancements will be refreshed continually to reflect the movements of your head. This is exactly what Googles Project Glass aims to do. MIT has been working on a Project called MIThril. MIThril is a functional, operational body-worn computing architecture for context-aware human computer interaction research and general-purpose wearable computing applications. The MIThril team is constructing a new kind of computing environment and developing prototype applications for health, communications, and just-intime information delivery. The future of AR looks really amazing!
Sources Compiled by : Aayush Goel ented-reality.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augment ed_reality http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/wpcontent/uploads/2012/02/GoogleAR-Glasses1.jpg

http://www.howstuffworks.com/augm

ACM activities with a difference : Asia Cup


The ACM team went global in a very unique way this time with the Indo-Pak coding contest, or the Asia Cup. ACM Student Chapter of IIT Delhi, along with NUCES ACM organized this event at on 30th March 2012. It was held at a total of 6 centers across both countries. These included: 1.Indian Institute of Technology Delhi 2.Sri Venkateshwara College of Engineering 3.Jamia Millia Islamia (hosted by Jamia Engineering Alumni Association ) Our friends from Pakistan were with us in this event at the following institutes : ticipants cutting across departments and years. In totality, there were 5 coding questions in the event which were of different difficulty levels. With an automated testing procedure, teams had to get the input-output specifications bang on target and this turned out to be particuThere was a participation of around 75 larly tough for many of the teams since it teams from IIT Delhi itself with the par- was their first ever participation in such 1.Punjab University College of Information Technology 2.National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences 3.Government College University an event. To make the task even more challenging, some of the questions also had a very rich algorithmic flavor. With sponsors like Google, Microsoft and associations with organizations like TOI and Aman ki Asha, the participants gained much more than just enriching experience. Teams from IIT Delhi featured in the global top 2 while the second runners up were from FAST-NU, Pakistan. These three teams clearly deserved the top honors with them being the only ones to crack 3 questions. The Chapter members from both countries called this event a great success and hailed the mutual understanding that developed through organization of the event. All in all, the event was an unforgettable experience for all and gives hope for more such events in the future.

Compiled by : Abhishek Sinha

Where is all the knowledge we lost with information? ~T.S. Elliot


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ACM activities with a difference : Tryst


I I T Delhi's Technical F es t i va l was held from 2nd to 5th March this year. It has been one of the most successful technical fests across the country. This year too, it proved as a perfect platform for talent, brilliance and intelligence. Tryst 2012 was based on Sci-Fi theme and paid tribute to some of the most popular contributions in science fiction of all times. It applauded the creations of many geniuses across centuries. Technical events of Computer Science and Engineering department marked a great success. Few of the events like Mathema, brought together some of the strongest and strangest opponents from all branches of mathematics for a two round challenge to find the best. The first round had a participation of around 50 teams, each of size two, from various colleges across India from which 16 teams were shortlisted for the final round. Another event ESOTERICA, the Sci-Tech quiz at Tryst held on 3rd March 2012. There were around 42 teams having participants across the country. The event had two main rounds: the first round was a written round for preliminary elimination. The second round was a bounce-round For algorithms lovers there was another tech-event titled Algorythm. It was an algorithmic challenge, where participants were required to produce solutions to exciting algorithmic questions which also space and time efficient. The prelims of Algorthym attracted more than 75 participants with large numbers of both IITD and non-IITD participants. 20 candidates were shortlisted for the final round. The event has been carried out in the previous years at Tryst and this year too it continued the tradition. There were many technical talks and workshops related to various interesting topics. One of them was Wiki Workshop, organized in collaboration with Wikipedia. The workshop was carried out in two batches during Tryst. Both the days it received an overwhelming response from IITD as well as non-IITD students and over 75 students attended it each day. The people from Wikipedia foundation also appreciated the enthusiasm they saw at IITD and showed interest in collaborating with IIT Delhi in future.
Compiled by : Swati Verma

between the seven qualified teams. There was a tough competition among participating teams. All performed so well that finally a tie-breaker was required!. This event was also sponsored by IBM, so winners had exciting prizes from IBM as well.

Call for articles


We are grateful for the contributions made by students and faculty alike for this as well as previous issues of the newsletter and hope for your continued support in making this a success. We invite contributions for articles and also membership into the ACM Student Chapter. This could be for being part of the Editorial Board or in the organization and planning of various activities and contests. Suggestions and viewpoints/comments for the same to enhance it further are also most welcome from the faculty and students of the department. Your contributions can be from any of the whole gamut of activities in the department like any special achievement, an admirable project, a publication or even the fun section material like jokes, cartoons, interesting facts or poems. You can also report any interesting workshop taking place in the department. Contributory material can be given to any member of the Editorial Board or mailed to aditi@cse.iitd.ac.in/acm@cse.iitd.ac.in.

Aditi Kapoor, Chief Editor

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? ~Albert Einstein
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ACM : A plethora of activities


We, at ACM@IITD believe that to contribute something to our Alma Mater and the computing community in general, it takes a little bit of planning, a little bit of industry involvement, a bit of hardwork on the side of the organizers, but most of all, it involves making the right decisions, decisions pertaining to what will be a hit with the people on campus. This year we had planned many activities for the semester. Events/activities which had never been hosted by us before. However, we were approached by so many industrial giants to organize their events that we had to cut back on our own plans. Not that we are complaining! The industry sponsored events were bigger than the ones we had planned and of course, had better prizes than we could give away. Right from the Distinguished Speaker Program, to the many seminars organized along the way to the major events like Indo-Pak coding contest and Microsoft Appathon, the ACM team continued their streak of trying new activities and making them bigger at the same time. As part of the ongoing nationwide (or international) campaign of Microsoft to popularize and familiarize their newly launched Windows operating system for Handhelds and Mobiles, Microsoft sponsored this event in which the theme again was to develop an app for a phone that is based on the Windows OS. The prizes were phenomenal, but the best part of this event was that it actually taught the participants a great deal about coding and using Microsoft's development platforms. Similarly Microsoft, along with Google, TOI and Aman ki Asha sponsored the Asiacup (Indo-Pak coding contest) which was considered grand success by all involved. Tryst was another means of showcasing the diversity of activities handled by the ACM team. We organized all online as well as offline events related to computer science which were part of Tryst '12. Tryst is our contribution to our Alma Mater and the computing community in general. We always strive to glamorize Computer Science and present it in the context of the real world, as opposed to what's taught to us in the classrooms. As we move on towards the summers and next semester, we hope to contribute in our endeavor to reach out to more and more masses with bigger, better and more exciting opportunities.
Contributed by : Aayush Goel

Fun Section:
CSE guy 1: Man, I'm so tired of the way developers are making their new applications! Why do they assume everyone has a touch screen device? There's nothing special about touch screen devices! CSE guy 2: Well, you've got to move with the times, I guess... Even keyboards must have been a novelty at some time, and I can imagine people protesting the same way as you are doing now, because they prefer to connect wires together to talk to the system! CSE guy 1: Yup! THAT is awesome! CSE guy 2: <Facepalm>
Contributed by : Mihir Mehta

We...
Who pays the price for the crown they wear? The security they need from people's fear. It's me, It's you ! For the power they flaunt and the authority they claim, who pays the tax in the country's name ? It's me, it's you ! Who lost the jobs in another recession? While they teach us economy, who dies of starvation ? It's me, it's you ! They have command on justice, but can't hear our cries. To keep economy alive, who has to die ? It's me, it's you ! we , they come to, for the revolution they need. but who enjoys the freedom, of our deed ? It's not me, it's not you !

Contributed by : Pranay Agarwal


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B R O U G H T OU T B Y A C M STUDENT CHAPTER
SponsorM. ACM Student Chapter Sponsor M. Balakrishnan

Newsletter Team inMagazine in-charge: Aditi Kapoor (aditi@cse.iitd.ernet.in) Assisted by ACM chapter members Chair - Savin Goyal Swati Verma Pulkit Yadav Aayush Goel (Photos in above order left to right)

Some tit bits


DOWN 1. A free, Java-based programming framework that supports the processing of large data sets in a distributed computing environment. 2. A Dutch mathematician known for significant contribution to graph theory, -calculus and combinatorics 3. A LIFO datatype. 4. A programming language whose s yntax consists entirely of whitespace. 5. Chess-playing computer developed by IBM that defeated world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997 8. An algorithm to find a solution to the instances of the traveling salesman problem. 10. Which famous IT company was named International Time Recording Company when it first came into picture. 12.The first ever speech recognition software developed in India. See the website in the first week of May for answers! Contributed by : Pulkit Yadav
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ACROSS 6. Name the O() sorting algorithm. 7. A futuristic motion sensing input device developed by Microsoft. 9. A functional, operational body-worn computing architecture for contextaware human-computer interaction (Hint : LOTR Trilogy). 11. The element used for making most IC chips. 13. A photo-sharing application that was recently acquired by Facebook. 14. Which was the first Indian company to be listed on the NYSE ? 15. Name of Yahoo!'s translation utility.

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