Sramana Majumdar

"Violence, Identity and Self-determination: Narratives of conflict from the Kashmir Valley" 4:15 PM, Monday 18 Nov Room 239, BYC Bryn Mawr College

Exposure Index

Tired of paper and pencil questionnaires about integration and intergroup contact? Try the new and improved EXPOSURE INDEX (click tab above on this page).

How Drones Will Fight Poachers To Save Endangered Species

Poaching has all the problems inherent in monitoring inaccessible locations added to the unpredictability of when and where a crime will occur. UAVs are a potentially excellent solution.

UAH unveils drone-like UAVs to aid police with campus safety

College campuses have long been centers of unmanned vehicles development and testing, making the sight of such things less surprising than elsewhere. Between that and the weekly pulse of inebriated students wandering around at night it’s easy to see why campus police would be interested in trying out something new.

Some surveillance drones, but not all, grounded under N.C. law

With privacy concerns mounting as domestic drones become reality, North Carolina took pre-emptive steps to prevent public outcry. Depending on how drones are used, this could be seen as either anachronistic or prescient.

Air Guard unit OK’d to fly drones in Syracuse area

According to this press release, a New York wing of the Air National Guard has been General Atomics MQ-9 Reapers instead of manned aircraft for three years. Following the trend of increased domestic drone use, their operational area has recently been expanded.

Pterodactyl-like bot “Daler” uses its wings for walking

A sign of greater flexibility to come, this design can both fly and walk. The proposed application is search and rescue – getting to a disaster zone and then being able to go into the rubble to look for survivors. Note, though, that the article’s example for UAVs is military drones “raining death from above”.

Pilotless drones to fly over England looking for missing walkers

Search and rescue is a perfect field for UAVs, and, according to polls, one of the least controversial. However, this article starts out with the sentence “Pilotless drones usually used in war will be spying on the English countryside to find missing walkers”. This approach reflects and reinforces the extent to which public opinion views […]

“Watchbird” by Robert Sheckley, 1953

An early vision of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, used in-story to prevent murder across the country. The story posits a great success for that original goal, but raises questions about unintended consequences, the wisdom of autonomous decision-making, and perhaps (allegorically) scope creep.