How do YOU perceive reuse of wastewater*?

From the inbox:

Dear Sri,

Your manuscript entitled "Water Resources and Wastewater Reuse: Perceptions of Students at The Ohio State University Campus" by Sridhar Vedachalam and Karen M. Mancl has been accepted for publication in The Ohio Journal of Science.

I will send you a formal letter next week.

The journal received my manuscript on July 18, 2011 and accepted it after 3 revisions on Feb 2, 2012. That makes it 6.5 months from submission to acceptance. Normal?

*All water we consume is wastewater treated at some earlier time and place. After all, we all live downstream!

Rangoli at Caroline

Two weeks after the Thanksgiving card-making, colors came to Caroline with the Rangoli activity. I bought three Rangoli patterns and some colors from Columbus. I couldn't get many colors, so I bought a packet of turmeric to add variety.

The kids worked in teams and rotated on the patterns. You can see the results getting better with time - less messy and more variety in colors towards the end. Some of the kids were so into it that their dresses reminded me of Holi, and they didn't want to stop even after it was time to go. Needless to say, the janitors at the school had a tough time getting the stains off the floor (a strong dose of Chlorox finally did the job).

Thanksgiving Card-making

The kids at the Caroline Elementary School in Caroline, NY made hand-painted Thanksgiving cards a week before Thanksgiving, thanks to my co-instructor Nandita Mathur. All of them were lovely, but I only captured these two on my camera:

This one was made by Alina (you can even notice she signed off her name in Hindi, which we had taught all the students to do in the first class).

This really cute one is from Teddy. It says, "I don't eat turkey, but I love corn" and is accompanied by a corn cob on the left, with a supposed representation of two people eating lots of corn on the right.

Fall in the Finger Lakes Region

2011 Big Ten Football: Week 3 Predictions

Predictions for Week 3

Legend: I predict the team in bold to win the game. The home team is listed first, followed by the visiting team.

1. Miami - Ohio State

2. Illinois - Arizona State

3. Notre Dame - Michigan State

4. Nebraska - Washington

5. Northern Illinois - Wisconsin

6. Iowa - Pittsburgh

7. Temple - Penn State

8. Purdue - Southeast Missouri State

9. Army - Northwestern

10. Minnesota - Miami (Ohio)

11.Indiana - South Carolina State

12. Michigan - Eastern Michigan

Season prediction: 7-5 (.583)

Impact of Tropical Storm Lee on Fall Creek

Fall Creek at the Beebe Lake in Cornell University campus (Ithaca, NY)

On Sep 8, after getting nearly 5 inches of rain in 2 days (Photo credit: Cornell Chronicle Online):

The same location, 2 weeks ago:

2011 Big Ten Football: Week 2

This week was quite rocky for the Big Ten teams. Some had blowout wins (Michigan State, Wisconsin), while some were not so lucky (Minnesota, Purdue). Two of the games went down to the wire (Iowa, Michigan). Let's see how they fared, and how well my predictions worked.

Legend: The team in bold was predicted to be the winner ahead of the game. Blue indicates a correct prediction, while Red indicates the prediction was not realized. The home team is listed first, followed by the visiting team.

1. Michigan State - Florida Atlantic

2. Ohio State - Toledo

3. Wisconsin - Oregon State

4. Iowa State - Iowa

5. Illinois - South Dakota

6. Northwestern - Eastern Illinois

7. Minnesota - New Mexico State

8. Penn State - Alabama

9. Rice - Purdue

10. Indiana - Virginia

11. Nebraska - Fresno State

11. Michigan - Notre Dame

Prediction result: 7-5 (.583)

AID Welcome Party this Saturday

Bloom-burgh!

Boston Diary

My flight to Boston had a layover at the The Reagan National Airport just off Washington, D.C. The airport is well-located, as you can see the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol from the airport.
















Washington is still enamored by the Obamas, as seen by the slew of books on display at the airport book store.

The Church of Scientology was right opposite Srivathsan's apartment.
Charles River is beautiful and serves as some sort of a boundary between Boston and Cambridge.
















(L: Cambridge skyline as seen from the Boston side of the river, and R: Boston skyline as seen from the Cambridge side of the river)

The Quincy Bay reminded me of the Santhome Beach:
Next up, the Bunker Hill Monument:





















The day was capped off with a visit to the Charlestown Navy Yard where the USS Constitution is stationed.
















Cambridge is a very bike-friendly city, as can be seen with the bike lanes that sometimes move from the road to the walkway.

















The big attraction on my way back home from the conference venue was MIT's Stata Center.





















Also on the way was the Broad Institute, a genomics center affiliated with MIT and Harvard. They had quite a few computer screens facing the outside, which showed some cool genetic screening and sequencing work.

















And finally, I saw this on Hanover Street, also called Little Italy. Apparently, Massachusetts is having fun with its newly elected Senator.


Here's a slideshow with some more photos:

Reflections from the Boston conference

(L: Kendall/MIT Station on the Red Line and R: Kendall Square as seen from the Marriott Hotel, the venue of the conference)

I got back from Boston 2 days ago where I attended the Water Environment Federation's Urban River Restoration Conference, and wanted to write this down before my memories fade away. I will write a few things about Boston in my next blog entry, hopefully with some pictures, but for now, some observations and incidents from the conference:

1. Elected officials can be sensible: The plenary session at the conference was followed by a panel discussion involving the co-chairs of the conference and some invited guests. Prominent among them was Ms. Henrietta Davis, Vice-Mayor of Cambridge, MA - a city in the Greater Boston area that borders Boston along the Charles River. I found her quite knowledgeable in the area of city planning and waterfront development, topics that were the theme of the conference. The interesting thing is that she is not appointed by someone to this post, based on any expertise in this area. Instead, she is an elected official who has to give campaign speeches and participate in public forums/debates to retain her job. The fact that her constituency includes two of the finest internationally-recognized institutions - Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is only a small consolation. The city is economically and racially diverse, just like any metro city (if you think getting elected to the city council is easy, think Harvey Milk). I found her making sensible arguments and providing cogent responses, and not giving cliched talking points and campaign statements. She seemed to have traveled to other cities and attended other conferences in the 'Green Development' area. If she stands for re-election anytime, consider this an endorsement from me.

2. Not Indian anymore: I met a professor from Canada, who teaches at Queen's University and works on onsite wastewater treatment, the same topic that I work on broadly. We got talking about our mutual works, and I explained to him the state of onsite systems in Ohio and my proposed project, where I happened to mention the term 'health impacts', as it connected to my study. He then replied, "....and you know, healthcare is a big issue in *your* country." Hmmm... so he meant the U.S. by 'your' country. Interesting..!

3. You don't have a card?: I also met the North American director of the International Water Association and got into a conversation. She said her office likes to maintain contacts with universities and wanted to have my card. I replied that I am a student, assuming that she will understand what I meant (that I didn't have a card). Just when she was handing me her card, she noticed that I was not making any effort to take out a card (that didn't exist) and remarked, "..so you really don't have a card". I was definitely surprised, since I didn't expect that people would expect a visiting card from me, in spite of being a student. So, a lesson for those going to conferences - create your visiting card (hand-made/printed/whatever), so you can give your contact information to those who may want to contact you (in case they really want to!).

Old Posts

Some old (substantive) posts collected here:

2009:

July
March
February

My travelogue:
US-India
India-US

Job Application to The Lantern: Sample Essay

Enrollment Statistics

I conducted a student survey on "perceptions regarding water and wastewater issues on OSU campus" in November 2009. I got working on analyzing the data. But before I could go too far, I needed to know some details on the demographic make-up of the student body at The Ohio State University, so I could compare my population demography with that of my survey sample.

Here is some interesting information about the demographic composition of OSU students in Columbus campus.

* Male: Female ratio - 51.86: 48.14
* Domestic: International - 92:8
* Ohio: Other states - 85.62: 14.38
* Undergraduate: Graduate: Professional - 75: 19: 6

Now, some information on enrollment by academic break-up:

The most popular major on campus (by numbers): hmmm....Computer Science? Philosophy? Biology? .....The answer is Exploration (in other words, Undecided) with 2816 students. At least, it is better than ending up in the wrong major.

Not accounting for undecided students and the 391 who are part of the Undergraduate Student Academic Services, I have divided the rest (includes undergraduate, graduate and professional students) into 17 colleges. Here's how they match-up against each other (click on the image get high-res view):



Engineering is the most popular field, no surprises there, with 7843 students. But I was surprised to see that the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences has the second-most number of students on campus (7416). In fact, if you separate Architecture (788 students) from Engineering, there are more social scientists studying on campus than engineers! College of Business comes in third with 6540 students, while the next big college is that of Education and Human Ecology (5706 students). The smallest colleges are that of Public Health and Nursing with about 270 students enrolled in each.

China sends the largest set of international students to Ohio State, with 1411 students, followed by Republic of Korea (read South Korea) and India, with about 700 students each. The number of Chinese students jumped 44% compared to last year, while those from other countries including Korea and India dropped by about 3%. Due to the large jump in the enrollment of Chinese students this year compared to the last, the number of international students on OSU campus went up by 7.7% over last year.

Finally, I noticed that there is one international student from Haiti. I hope his/her family and relatives are safe after the massive earthquake. If you are interested in more information, please open this pdf file from the Registrar's website. Information for each Quarter is available here.

In Print

My second journal article is in print. Click here if you are using a university computer/connection, or click here to view the pdf version.

Citation: S. Vedachalam, J. P. Schmiedeler, K. M. Mancl. 2009. Automation of Delivery Device for Chlorine Dioxide Disinfection. Applied Engineering in Agriculture. 25(6): 915-921.

Consumer Surplus

More than 3 months ago, I had posted about the quirky way in which my paper got accepted at a conference. Click here to revisit history. At that time, it wasn't decided if I would go and present at the conference.

It's now decided and sealed. I am going to Boston in March to present at the Urban River Restoration Conference. I talked to my project guide in December, and he indicated that there were $500 left in the project account and I could use that amount to fund my travel. In effect, there was a willingness to pay upto $500 for the travel expense.

That's when I discovered Bing Travel. You may hate Microsoft for whatever reasons, but you've got to love Bing Travel. It is the only website to offer predictions on the best time to purchase tickets. Based on historical records, it gives you a simple indicator of whether fares will go up or down in the next few days and what is your best course of action (buy tickets now/wait). I tried it, waited for more than a week, but got what I wanted - cheap fares to Boston.

I bought my tickets today for $283. Assuming that I spend $50 for checking in a bag, I still spend $333 for travel from the project account. This means that Consumer Surplus for the project account is $500 - $333 = $167. This surplus can now be used for some other project-related expense in the future. Consumer surplus is an important concept in economics and I will let you read more about it on Wikipedia.

This time, paper rejection

I received this in my mail (postal mail, not email) a few days ago from the American Water Works Association (AWWA):

Dear Mr. Vedachalam:

Thank you for submitting your abstract entitled (sic) "Designing an Automated Delivery Device for Chlorine Dioxide Disinfection" to the International Symposium on Waterborne Pathogens Planning Committee for consideration for a presentation at the 2010 symposium.

On behalf of the technical committee, I'm sorry to inform you that your abstract was not chosen for a technical session. The planning committee reviews all the submitted abstracts, taking into consideration the timeliness of the abstract topic, the number of abstracts submitted on a specific topic, and the limitation on the number of sessions.
...

And the letter talks about how my abstract was good, but didn't have a place in the program, yada, yada. I am sad, not for getting this paper rejected, but because I missed a chance to visit Manhattan Beach, California, the venue of the symposium. If you didn't know, the median price of a single family dwelling with an ocean view is close to 2.1 million dollars in that town. Wow!

Proposal Talk

I gave a proposal talk at my program (Environmental Science Graduate Program) seminar couple of weeks ago. The talk was recorded (audio + Powerpoint slides). Click here to view the streaming presentation.

Michigan Week

The annual Michigan Week is back. ESPN's Adam Rittenberg has this to stay about Ohio State football coach Jim 'Vest' Tressel:

AP Photo/Jay LaPrete

Ohio State coach Jim Tressel is going for his sixth straight win against rival Michigan.

Jim Tressel may go on to win another national championship at Ohio State.

He'll likely win more BCS bowl games and more Big Ten titles. When he's finished coaching, he might enter politics or open his own sweater vest manufacturing company.

But when we look back on Tressel's place in college football history, he will always be remembered for this week. Michigan week.

No one does it better.

Read the rest of the article here. I think the part about the 'sweater vest manufacturing company' is really funny. But one thing is true: when it comes to Michigan, 'Vest' knows best.

Fall Colle(r)ction 2009

An attempt to capture the changing colors

AID Freshers Party this Saturday