National Day of Mourning in Bangladesh

Rosalie — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 18:08:07 +0000

The National Day of Mourning is observed by IIBHB and Ghosh Science and Technology Institute on Aug 15, 2023

Sergey Donskoy

Webmaster — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 07:18:21 +0000

Sergey Donskoy

Assistant to Chair

Sergey Donskoy holds master-level degrees in public administration, in law, and in economics. He gained expertise in infotech and legal domains, and acquired work experience in a number of organizations, including U.S. corporations. In 2000, Sergey first in the world proposed crowdinvesting based on individual contracts and advocated for enacting a law promoting and protecting crowdinvesting entities.

In 2008, he designed eIDAS platform “Unified Electronic Card” which offered a number of online services with the use of a single identity card, digital document signing, and securing transactions in the chained records of the distributed ledger. Unified Electronic Card provided a straightforward mechanism for identity verification without collecting and processing biometrics. The only biometrics was the photograph printed on the card. The platform services included “Door Access Card”, “Transit Fare Card”, “Student Identification”, “Health Records”, “Employment Records”, “Electronic Documents”, “Price Discounts”, “Electronic Money”. “Electronic Transit Fare Card” was officially proposed to the state government in 2011.

In 2014, Sergey Donskoy proposed a concept of Quaternary education and designed a novel careers platform governing the job market at national level, which would allow for eliminating structural and frictional unemployment, providing guaranteed jobs to nearly every unemployed. The concept of Quaternary education included an innovative mechanism of competencies assessment, evaluation of educational credentials, and dynamic governing of the state immigration policy for balancing the national job market. Sergey Donskoy advocated for enacting a law which would accelerate institutional establishing of Quaternary education and bringing his careers platform to real life.

Sergey Donskoy published scholarly articles on institutional economics of national systems of innovation. He gained teaching experience, instructed university students and evaluated their works. Sergey also developed university course programs along with academic tutorials.

Sergey is Fulbright alumnus and Chair at Professional Competence Institute — a research organization developing the platforms and promoting Quaternary education as a national socioeconomic institution. At IIBHB Sergey works on attracting grants, scientific aspects and legal matters associated with developing and realization of IIBHB projects.

Water Project for the Community: Technology that Works

Rosalie — Sun, 10 Dec 2017 19:23:51 +0000

Invited speakers from UC Berkeley and Stanford Universities will talk about the HydroGrameen Technology (water project for the community by refilling depleted aquifers and converting watershed into water village) and how it addresses the global water crisis, with the end view of establishing a self-reliant, affordable and clean water resources for the community, as well as prevent further land subsidence.

Interested to speak or share your ideas at the event? Please email us with you topic at bengalbasin@gmail.com on or before 14 December 2017 to be included in the program.

Program

Welcome remarks by Brian Scott, Director of Berkeley Community Media
Presentation/Discussion

Dawn Bravo, PhD (Biochemistry, Stanford University) David Seaborg (Evolutionary Biology & President, Rainforest Fund)
Mamade Kadreebux (Author and Artist)
Rash B. Ghosh, PhD (Ecology, Hydrology, Salford-Manchester University)

Other invited speakers

Q&A
Networking/Mixer

(Master of Ceremonies – Melanie Mentzel)

Event is free and refreshments will be served.

Organized by The International Institute of Bengal and Himalayan Basins (IIBHB) in collaboration with the Berkeley Community Media (BCM)

Questions or RSVP, please email bengalbasin@gmail.com or call 510-575-5112

You can also register through Eventbrite – 8th Annual Townes and Tagore Seminar: HydroGrameen Technology (Water Project for the Community)

The Global Water Situation: California and Beyond

Rosalie — Sun, 14 Aug 2016 23:47:37 +0000

On Saturday September 17th, 2016, the International Institute for the Bengal and Himalayan Basins (IIBHB), a nonprofit organization located in Berkeley, California, will hold its 7th Annual Townes and Tagore Seminar on the Global Water Crisis in 775 Tan Hall on the UC Berkeley Campus. This event is jointly sponsored by the IIBHB and the U. C. Berkeley Departments of Chemistry, Molecular Cell Biology (MCB), Public Health. Speakers will include authorities on water, environmental, and canopy chemistry, climate science, the water crisis in California, civil engineering, energy storage, and nanotechnology.

This year’s discussion will focus on the IIBHB’s “HydroGramin” model, the design of Dr. Rashbihari Ghosh, a Bangladeshi-American scientist, for a complex of villages built around a central reservoir on the principles of sustainable hydrological, architectural, and agricultural development. While serving communities economically and as a source of clean drinking water, irrigation, and aquaculture, HydroGramin projects will, in turn, be used to recharge or cleanse deep and shallow aquifers and will also prevent land subsidence, and address problems caused by sea-level rise. The seminar’s convener, Prof. Richard Saykally, a UCB authority on water chemistry, will address the overall advantage of the HydroGramin model over desalination and the place of both technologies in our planet’s water future. Other speakers include our institute’s advisor, Dr. Randy Scheckman, the 2013 Nobel Laureate in Medicine. We are greatly indebted to Professor Scheckman for his ongoing support of our institute and the insight brings to our development of solutions. Other speakers include Dr. Ghosh, Felicia Marcus, Chair of the California Water Control Board along with other scholars and scientists.

PROGRAM

10:00 Introductory Talks: 10 min

Richard Saykally(UCB Chemistry)
Rash B. Ghosh(IIBHB)-“Canopy Chemistry and Hydrogramin”
John Paulin(IIBHB)-“Charles Townes and Hydrogramin: Water that works for everybody”…10 min

10:30 Invited Lectures: 15 min

Nir Krakauer (CCNY-Hydrogeology)-“Climate-adaptive research and technology transfer for rural Nepal”
Inez Fung (UCB Earth and Planetary Science)-“Precipitation Variability and Trends”
Robert Kostecki (LBNL)-“Forward osmosis water desalination via lower critical solution temperature ionic liquids/water phase transition”
Charlie Kuffner (SkyH2O Inc) -“Condensing Relative Humidity in the air for Commercial Atmospheric Water Generation (AWG) Applications
Tarek Zohdi (UCB Mechanical Eng)-“Due Diligence When Considering New Water Technologies: An Engineer’s Point of View”
Khalid Mosalam (UCB Mechanical Eng)-
Teresa Head Gordon (UCB Chemistry)-

12:00 Break

1:00 Invited Student Talks: 15 min

Michelaina Johnson (UCB Environmental History) “Lessons from a River: Restoration on the Cosumnes River”
Devansh Jalota (UCB CEE)-“Mumbai’s Urban Water Challenges and Possible solutions for its Slum communities.”
Matthew DiTucci (UCB Chem)-“An Isolated Approach to the Solution: Using Aqueous Nanodroplets to Investigate Solvated Ions
Deb McCaffery (UCB Chem)-“Ions at the Graphene-Water Interface”
Tony Rizzuto (UCB Chem)-“Deep UV Spectra of Ions at the Water Surface”
Royce Lam (UCB Chem)-“Carbon Dioxide-Water Interactions from X-ray Spectroscopy”
Will Cole (UCB Chem)-“Terahertz Laser Spectroscopy of Water Clusters: Towards Improved Water dels”

The event is free and open to the public.

View the flyer

Kevin Mahoney

Webmaster — Sun, 24 Apr 2016 06:03:47 +0000

Kevin Mahoney

Kevin is a first-year undergraduate civil and environmental engineering student at the University of California, Berkeley. His related interests include environmental justice and the incorporation of sociopolitical, cultural, and demographic factors into engineering work. He is currently working at a wastewater treatment and groundwater testing project in West Oakland under the guidance of the Berkeley Water Center and the Blum Center for Developing Economies and is a research assistant at the Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory and at the University of California, San Francisco. Kevin speaks English, Chinese, and Japanese and is learning German and Korean. In his free time he enjoys rowing, hiking, running, playing horn, and traveling.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-mahoney-b577a276

E-mail: kmahoney@berkeley.edu

Jason Ravitz, PhD

Rosalie — Sat, 23 Apr 2016 04:39:17 +0000

Jason Ravitz, PhD
Director for Education

Jason Ravitz, founder of Evaluation by Design LLC, is an evaluation and research professional with 25 years experience driving strategy, implementation, insights and impact measurement for educational and social change initiatives. He started as a social studies teacher before finding the Internet and pursuing a Ph.D. in Instructional Design, Development and Evaluation. This led to a career studying how communities and schools use technology to empower themselves, to promote equity, learning and growth. He has worked closely with small organizations and conducted major studies of education and career development programs — often identifying key factors and conditions for change. He completed postdoctoral positions at UC, Irvine and at UC, Berkeley and has held senior positions at Google, Digital Promise, and Buck Institute for Education. Jason earned a combined B.A. from Harvard College in Sociology & Psychology and his Ph.D.from Syracuse University.

The HydroGrameen Model (formerly known as Bengal Basin Working Model)

Webmaster — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 07:51:59 +0000

The HydroGrameen Model:
formerly known as Bengal Basin Working Model

HydroGrameen, is a combination of Bengali and Indian words for “jhol” or “pani ” (both Sanskrit words), for water and “gau” or “garam” for village ). When work was in progress, it was known as Bengal Basin Working Model. Both Berkeley and Harvard professors also contributed in the development of the Bengal Basin model in late 1990s and early 2006. The Bengal Basin model was renamed “HydroGrameen” to reflect the Indo-Bangla culture and tradition where the idea was born and the work started.

The HydroGrameen Technology involves injecting fresh, clean water to replenish depleted aquifers in a safe way to protect the world’s most invaluable resource, water. This technology can be used to build a new watershed as well as to protect the existing one and make them self-sustaining by installing eco-housing based on eco-economics. The economics must be based on ecology, the environmental and improvement of quality of life. The drinking water research began in Ancient India when many civilizations at their dawn. This technology has taken shape after 35 years of work in Bengal Basin, Great Britain and California. Finally, it was in Berkeley, California that the technology has come to fruition. HydroGrameen has become possible with the availability of advance technology that has been developed by US and Europe and tested repeatedly and proven to be safe.

Worst Drought in 1,000 Years Predicted for American West

Webmaster — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 04:28:24 +0000

A paddle wheeler and a small motorboat sail on Lake Mead, North America’s largest man-made reservoir. The water is at its lowest level since the Hoover Dam was built in the 1930s. The white “bathtub ring” of mineral deposits on the rocks marks past water levels. (Photograph by Ethan Miller, Getty Images)

Large parts of the U.S. are in for a drought of epic proportions in the second half of this century, scientists warn in a new study that provides the highest degree of certainty yet on the impact of global warming on water supplies in the region.

The chances of a 35-year or longer “megadrought” striking the Southwest and central Great Plains by 2100 are above 80 percent if the world stays on its current trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions, scientists from NASA, Columbia University, and Cornell University report in a study published Thursday in the new open-access journal Science Advances.

If countries reduce their emissions to current “middle of the road” targets, the chances of a megadrought hitting the Great Plains drop to between 60 and 70 percent. But they remain nearly 80 percent for the Southwest.

National Geographic – see link below
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/02/150212-megadrought-southwest-water-climate-environment/

Harry Choudhury, M.D.

Webmaster — Thu, 30 Jul 2015 08:00:27 +0000

Harry Choudhury, M.D.
Volunteer

Striking Photos Show Struggle Of Farmers In California Drought

Webmaster — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 23:32:57 +0000

Recent years have been trying for California as it weathers its worst drought in 1,200 years. Perhaps the hardest hit have been the state’s farmers and the local economies that rely on them.

In images from the western San Joaquin Valley, photographer Randi Lynn Beach shows the plight of farmers aching for more water — a need she says folks in urban areas sometimes fail to grasp.

“I don’t think people think that much about where their food comes or where their water comes from,” Beach told The Huffington Post, adding that she hopes that those who view her photos get a sense of what the drought has done to the land and labor in rural areas. “I really wanted to start getting a dialogue going about what we can do when [water] is such a limited resource.”

Beach’s photos spotlight communities west of the San Joaquin River, where experts she interviewed for a short documentary say farmers are struggling.

“There is a priority as to who gets water based on contracts that are signed with the federal government,” Don Villarejo, an agriculture economy and rural society researcher and consultant, said in the documentary Beach released with the photo series. “… If there’s a year like the present, where we’ve lost 20 to 25 percent of our yield due to a drought, because the folks on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley were the last to develop their projects, they get only what’s left after everyone else gets their share, and so the crunch is really coming to the west side farmers.”

The conditions surrounding California’s contentious water politics are perhaps nowhere more apparent than in Westlands — a stretch of farmland featured in some of Beach’s photos that critics say probably shouldn’t be used as farmland. Roughly half of the 600,000-acre stretch of land is badly drained and laden with naturally occurring salts and the toxic trace element selenium that have washed down from the coast. The parched, sun-soaked terrain was once considered uninhabitable desert, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Those debates get complicated, and there are always more layers to peel back, Beach told HuffPost.

“I’m an artist, not an activist,” she said.

(source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/15/california-drought-farm-photos_n_6482762.html)