Know your Garden Microbes : Nostoc As gardeners, we often focus on the macro aspects of our garden such as the plants, trees, and shrubs. But, what about the tiny microbes that play a vital role in the health of our gardens? Today, we are going to focus on a particular type of bacteria that is often overlooked: Nostoc. What is Nostoc? N ostoc is a jelly-like microorganism commonly found growing on soggy lawns. While the discovery of the creature might be frightening for some gardeners, it poses no threat to plants or animals in the environment. Because the Nostoc grows in places where grass does not, it is likely to fill in any gaps left by the grass. Evidence of an imbalance in the ratio of fungus to bacteria can be easily identified. Figure 1: Nostoc Growing in the Garden. It was once believed that these strange-looking masses of matter came from the dust of shooting stars, which gave rise to the nicknames star jelly, star shot, and star slime beca...
Basic Introduction to Sentic Computing: Sentic computing is an interdisciplinary field that combines affective computing (emotions and feelings) and commonsense computing to analyze sentiments and opinions on the web effectively. Its goal is to enhance the recognition, interpretation, and processing of sentiments by leveraging computer science and social science techniques. Key Models and Resources: a) The Hourglass of Emotions: The Hourglass of Emotions is a popular model used in sentic computing. It represents emotions as a hierarchy, ranging from basic emotions (e.g., joy, anger) to complex emotions (e.g., love, guilt). This model helps in understanding the relationships and transitions between different emotional states. b) Sentic Patterns: Sentic Patterns are linguistic patterns or templates that capture the expression of sentiments in text.They are useful for sentiment analysis as they provide a way to identify and extract sentiment-related information from text. For example, a p...