While electronic waste, or e-waste, is a concern for Sri Lanka, this country has not yet been impacted as badly as highly industrialised countries, where the levels of e-waste are considerably higher. As such, local e-waste should be managed carefully, epecially since the chemicals and other materials associated with e-waste are of significant detriment to this island’s ecology. This is one of the areas of discussion planned for the upcoming full-day workshop on ‘e-waste and green computing’, which will be held on the day before the two-day International Conference on Advances in ICT for Emerging Regions (ICTer) 2013, according to Harsha Wijewardana, one of the resource persons running this pre-conference e-waste workshop.

In addition to bringing government officials, academics and corporates together to create awareness of the problems of local e-waste, as well as discussing its management, this workshop will also touch upon trends pertaining to carbon trading and green computing which will help counter or, at least limit, its impact, added Mr. Wijewardana. Mr. Wijewardana made these comments at a recent media event, to create awareness of this conference, in which he was joined by University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC) Director Prof. Gihan Wikramanayake and ICTer 2013 conference chair Dr. K.P. Hewagamage. The UCSC is organising ICTer 2013, which will begin on December 12, 2013. The ICTer 2013 schedule also includes several pre- and post-conference workshops and tutorials to be held on December 11 and 14 at the UCSC. More details are available at www.icter.org.

Commenting further, Dr. Hewagamage noted that there were 40 peer-reviewed papers being presented out of a total of 112 submissions, resulting in an acceptance rate of approximately 27 per cent. Out of these, 10 were from foreign universities, out of a total of 17 received. As such, there would be a total of 52 presentations being made, over the two days of the conference, comprising 18 full papers, 22 short papers and 12 poster presentations, all categorised across three parallel tracks. He also added that, like last year, the conference would likely attract about 230 participants.

Meanwhile, the keynote presentations at the conference are “Video Forgery and Motion Editing” by Prof. Timothy Shih of the National Central University in Taiwan; “Multimodality + Multimedia + Sensors = Pleasant Interfaces” by Prof. Masahito Hirakawa of the Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Science and Engineering at Shimane University in Japan; “Design-based Mobile Learning Research: Results and reflections on communication and sustainability” by Prof. Robert Ramberg of Stockholm University in Sweden; “Enhancing Health Communication using Digital Media: Trends and Experiences” by Prof. May Oo Lwin of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore; “Architecture for Digital Knowledge Ecosystems” by Prof. Athula Ginige, the Professor of Information Technology at the School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics at the University of Western Sydney in Australia; “Document Image Analysis: Past, Present and Future” by Prof. Umapada Pal of the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Unit at the Indian Statistical Institute; “Statistical Relational Learning – Different formalisms and representations” by Dr. Sushil Kulkarni at Jai Hind College of the University Of Mumbai in India; and “From Bioinformatics to Systems Biology” by Prof. Mahesan Niranjan at the University of Southampton UK.

Additionally, some full papers to be presented at the conference comprise topics including: “ISP Friendly Peer Selection in BitTorrent”; “Location Based Advertising Framework for Mobile and Web Application Developers in Sri Lanka”; “Prediction of Horizontal Gene Transfer in Escherichia coli using Machine Learning”; “Active Contour-based Segmentation and Removal of Optic Disk from Retinal Images”; “Facial Image Classification Based On Age And Gender”; “Computational Cell Classification Methodology for Hepatocellular Carcinoma”; “Non Invasive Human Stress Detection Using Key Stroke Dynamics And Pattern Variations”; “Spatial Data Mining Technique To Evaluate Forest Extent Changes Using GIS And Remote Sensing”; “Energy-Efficient Communication With Wake-Up Receiver Technologies And An Optimised Protocol Stack”; “Churn Prediction Methodologies In The Telecommunications Sector: A Survey”; and “A Novel Approach to Simulate Wind-driven Waves in the Deep Ocean”.

While some short papers to be shared are: “KAnt: Leveraging Ant Colony Optimisation For Automatic Knowledge Acquisition From Web Documents”; “Big Data solution for Sri Lankan development: A case study from Travel and Tourism”; “My Sensors: A System For Secure Sensor Data Sharing Over Internet”; “Comparing Support Vector Regression and Random Forests Modelling for Predicting Malaria Incidence in Mozambique”; “Techno-Economical Optimisation Of A Solid Waste Management System Using Evolutionary Algorithms”; and “Short-term Forecasting of Electricity Consumption in Maputo”.

The following poster presentations will also be showcased: “Using eastern philosophy for computer modelling of cognitive performance”; “A Model based Approach to Simulate Excess Water of Reservoirs in Sri Lanka”; “Adaptive Eastern Music Score Reader for Visually Impaired in Sri Lanka”; “ICT for Social Networking in Flood Risk and Knowledge Management Strategies”; “A theoretical framework to conduct informal m-learning research in agriculture”; “SMART VIGILANTE: Intelligent Driver Vigilance Monitoring based on Sensor Fusion and Driving Pattern Recognition”; ” Communication Challenges for Digital Culture in Sri Lankan Estate Areas”; “Dynamic Resource Scheduling in Forest Fire Situations in Sri Lanka”; “Riyadisi – Intelligent Driver Monitoring System”; and “A Novel Approach to Optimize Crime Investigation Process Using Palm print Recognition”.