CHALLENGE 5Best Practices exhibited by Ants

By:Stutidutta MishraAggyapal Singh

Subhabrata Chatterjee

Under the guidance of :Prof. K.R.Chari

BIMTECH, Greater Noida

1. A new worker spends the first few days of its adult life caring for the queen and young. She then graduates to digging and other nest work, and later to defending the nest and foraging.

Application – Use of class schedules in a gradual and flexible manner to suit students requirements :- This system can be applied to our system of learning.- In this case, students will be gradually exposed to a 3

hour continuous learning instead of jumping to it right from the first day.

- Students can be given a flexibility of class and schedules, like in the first trimester each classes can be of 1 hour session each.

- In the next trimester this can be graduated to a 2 hour session of class.

- Finally as students reach the third trimester they will be able to withstand classes 3 hours long.

Advantage:

- It would help gain more productivity in terms of the students.

- Their class participation will also increase and they wont find management education to be tedious right from the start.

- With active participation, faculties will also be motivated to promote a better teaching.

2. The females store the sperm they obtain during their nuptial flight to selectively fertilise future eggs.

Application – The same system can be applied to BIMTECH mess :

- Make half cooked foods which can be fully cooked and preserved for a small period of time

- This food can be then fully cooked as per the demand as it comes up

- Like for example, if someday the demand of food consumption rises, they can be catered directly with the half cooked foods, thus this will make the process easier and the waiting time of the students will be reduced.

- Thus the cost of fully cooking food and having it as a wastage in days of low consumption will be reduced.

- This is a case of Postponement strategy

Advantage:

- The wastage in terms of food can be controlled- The demand of the foods can be controlled- Waiting time for students in time of high demand of

food will be less in this case

3. Ants store the food for the winter season during summer only.

Application – The same can be applied in the BIMTECH water tanks also

- During summers, we use the water cooler to cool the hot water stored in the tank

- This cooler consumes extra electricity and students may sometimes have to wait to get the water cooled

- The problem can be solved if we provide a secondary storage with the water in the main tank

- A portion of the water will be automatically transferred to the secondary storage tank which will basically be an insulating material absorbing the heat from the water

- Thus we can get a continuous flow of cool water even if the cooler is not being used

Advantage:- Less consumption of water coolers- Saving of electricity- Students no longer have to wait at times when the

flow gets stopped due to inadequate water in the cooler (especially during heavy demand times)

4. Suicidal defences by workers are noted in a Brazillian ant. Forelius Pusillus, where a small group of ants leave the security of the nest after sealing the entrance from the outside each evening.

Application:- The same can be applied in BIMTECH hostels as well-Hostel consists of around 400 rooms and Air-Conditioners(AC) are fitted in each room.- Students often forget to switch off the AC while going out of their rooms. Hence, it results in unnecessary power consumption which can be later utilised in a more productive way.- By applying the above ant mechanism, rooms can be provided with auto-lock keys.-When a student leaves his/her room, he/she has to take the key out from its groove/slot which will turn the AC off.-Without taking out the key, the room wont get locked. Thus it is an automatic process.

Advantage:- Saving of electricity- Fool-proof process as the room wont get locked without the key. As the key is taken out from the slot, AC is switched off automatically.- Security advantage for the students and they are made more responsible.

5. Two antennae (feeders) are attached to the head. These organs detect chemicals, air, currents and vibrations. They are also used to transmit and receive signals through sensory touch.Application - Use of a portable Biometric sensor to take classroom attendance:

- A portable Biometric finger print scanner would be assigned for each subject in a trimester/semester.

- The access to operating menu of scanner would be authorised to the course faculty.

- The faculty would access the scanner’s menu and would open the scanner for accepting student finger prints as a mark of their presence in class and record their attendance.

- The scanner would be passed on from student to student during the class. Each student would get the thumb scanned on the sensor and mark his attendance.

- As the class finishes, the faculty would close the sensor from accepting any further thumb prints. The attendance of all the students would be saved in the memory of sensor.

Advantage:

- It would help in saving the time, which was earlier being used by faculty for marking physical attendance in the attendance register.

- The saved time can be used for much useful Student/Faculty interaction

- The digitally recorded attendance could be directly downloaded onto an excel file

- No proxy attendance could be marked- The scanner can be used again and again for one

course at a time for many trimesters, which is not the case with physical attendance registers.