Tech4all group blog

[tech4all] Exposed - Indian Medical or Marketing Association ???

2011-08-03T22:47:00.000-07:00

Exposed - Indian Medical or Marketing Association ???

Indian Medical Association(IMA) (http://www.ima-india.org) endorses various products like Eureka forbes aqua guard purifier, dettol etc.

but in IMA website, there is no information about the certificate , tests conducted for Eureka Forbes and other products that are endorsed by IMA.

As per bis.org , the fee for ISI /ISO certification is only around Rs. 10,000 to 20,000.

For Eureka Forbes with Rs.1,107 crore turnover, its not difficult for them to pay Rs.3 crore to Indian Medical Association to get the Endorsement.

Even, IMA endorses PepsiCo's Tropicana pure juices and Quaker Oats in 2008 (for hefty payment of Rs.50 lakhs). However, objection by doctors, the endorsement is later withdrawn.

My Doubts:
1. Why its costs crores for getting IMA endorsement ,whereas ISI / ISO certifications costs in Rs.10,000 only with lab tests?

2. Why IMA did not publish any information about the tests conducted or the certificates issued details in its website.

3. Why I should not think that, these as pay and get endorsement / certifications. What's the need for getting fee in crores?

4. BIS specifies standards, lab test details in its website (for ISI / ISO certifications). Why IMA doesn't provide any such details?

Remember, one of the trusted association which tests purifiers is WQA (Water Quality Association, USA). Only Phillips purifiers and Whirpool purifiers had received the top award WQL Gold seal award out of all purifier companies in India.

HUL claim of killing 1 crore virus in 1 litre of water is false.
http://www.moneylife.in/article/how-safe-is-your-water-purifier-hul-makes-exaggerated-claims/17029.html

Also, see suspension of IMA President by Indian government.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/mci-suspends-ima-president-secretary/713587/

Sources:
1. Indian Medical Association Endorses Pepsi's Tropicana -http://www.indiaresource.org/news/2008/1048.html

2. HUL claim of killing 1 crore virus in 1 litre of water is false. http://www.moneylife.in/article/how-safe-is-your-water-purifier-hul-makes-exaggerated-claims/17029.html

3. IMA faces ire for endorsing juice brand. http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2008-05-08/india/27753533_1_ima-pure-juices-indian-medical-association.

to be continued.........................

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[tech4all] Exposed - Indian Medical or Marketing Association ???

2011-07-25T03:41:00.000-07:00

Exposed - Indian Medical or Marketing Association ???

Indian Medical Association(IMA) (http://www.ima-india.org) endorses various products like Eureka forbes aqua guard purifier, dettol etc.

but in IMA website, there is no information about the certificate , tests conducted for Eureka Forbes and other products that are endorsed by IMA.

As per bis.org , the fee for ISI /ISO certification is only around Rs. 10,000 to 20,000.

For Eureka Forbes with Rs.1,107 crore turnover, its not difficult for them to pay Rs.3 crore to Indian Medical Association to get the Endorsement.

Even, IMA endorses PepsiCo's Tropicana pure juices and Quaker Oats in 2008 (for hefty payment of Rs.50 lakhs). However, objection by doctors, the endorsement is later withdrawn.

My Doubts:
1. Why its costs crores for getting IMA endorsement ,whereas ISI / ISO certifications costs in Rs.10,000 only with lab tests?

2. Why IMA did not publish any information about the tests conducted or the certificates issued details in its website.

3. Why I should not think that, these as pay and get endorsement / certifications. What's the need for getting fee in crores?

4. BIS specifies standards, lab test details in its website (for ISI / ISO certifications). Why IMA doesn't provide any such details?

Remember, one of the trusted association which tests purifiers is WQA (Water Quality Association, USA). Only Phillips purifiers and Whirpool purifiers had received the top award WQL Gold seal award out of all purifier companies in India.

HUL claim of killing 1 crore virus in 1 litre of water is false.
http://www.moneylife.in/article/how-safe-is-your-water-purifier-hul-makes-exaggerated-claims/17029.html

Also, see suspension of IMA President by Indian government.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/mci-suspends-ima-president-secretary/713587/

Sources:
1. Indian Medical Association Endorses Pepsi's Tropicana -http://www.indiaresource.org/news/2008/1048.html

2. HUL claim of killing 1 crore virus in 1 litre of water is false. http://www.moneylife.in/article/how-safe-is-your-water-purifier-hul-makes-exaggerated-claims/17029.html

3. IMA faces ire for endorsing juice brand. http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2008-05-08/india/27753533_1_ima-pure-juices-indian-medical-association.

to be continued.........................

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[tech4all] Microwave water kills plant?

2011-06-29T02:41:00.000-07:00

An experiment conducted for science fair with normal boiled water and microwave boiled water.........

The results of this experiment is....check the below link.

http://surendiran.blogspot.com/

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[tech4all] Make your system work faster - easy method

2011-03-31T12:35:00.000-07:00

http://surendiran.blogspot.com/2009/08/system-speedup-or-reduce-system-booting.html

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[tech4all] 32 GB pen drives or 320GB/500 GB portable HDD

2011-03-31T12:34:00.000-07:00

32 GB pen drives or 320GB/500 GB portable HDD.

both are available for same price. Which is better to buy?

http://surendiran.blogspot.com/2011/03/32gb-pendrive-vs-500gb-portable-hdd.html

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[tech4all] Indian Corruption Report - 2010

2011-03-10T00:03:00.000-08:00

Every one must read

Corruption-In-India-2010-And-Before.pdf

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[tech4all] Chennai students win award for humanoid robot

2011-02-16T00:13:00.000-08:00

A group of students from Chennai won the best innovation award for a humanoid robot during the recently held Spring Innovations Competition at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

The students of Bharath University won the prestigious award by beating 66 other universities who had participated in the competition.

The robot is 58 centimeters long and weighs about 4.3 kilograms. The most important feature of the robot is that it can recognise faces apart from dancing, singing, walking and picking objects.

"It has the ability of thinking on his own, according to the situation. It's called behaviour programme or behaviour-based control. For example, if I tell him to water a plant, even though the plant is dried, he will go, find the plant and check whether the plant is dried or not and he will pour the water, only if the plant is dry. If the plant is not dried he will not pour the water." said Jai Shankar, Technical Advisor.

Cameras, motors and other mechanical devices have been used for the smooth movement of the robot.

"It can be used as a security robot, it can play football, it can dance, it can recognise the face, all the features have been combined together in a single form" said Venugopal, a team member, Bharath University.

The audience at the event enjoyed watching the robot dance to the tunes of A. R. Rahman's Oscar award winning song 'Jai Ho' from the movie 'Slumdog Millionaire'.

The creators also said that they want the military to make use of the robot.

The students said the robot's creation makes it different from all the other robotic innovations because of the programmes that have been used for its functioning.

In recent years, robots have become a very common phenomenon due to new technologies.(ANI)

http://www.sify.com/news/chennai-students-win-award-for-humanoid-robot-news-national-lcprkhhbach.html

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[tech4all] Visit Kenlighten - an ideal online destination for teachers, educators, job seekers, students

2011-01-24T00:50:00.000-08:00

Dear friends,

I am writing to share with you about a unique social knowledge network -
Kenlighten http://www.kenlighten.com .

At Kenlighten you can register for a free account and create online
tutorials in your area of expertise by uploading your ebooks,
presentations, articles, videos, audio files. You can also use the
Kenlighten Presentation tool to make online presentations. Further, you
can create online communities, network with other members and learn from
other members. Apart from sharing knowledge, you can also post jobs,
share events, build your photo albums and share them with your
connections.

So do visit http://www.kenlighten.com and subscribe for your free
account. And yes, do not forget to invite your friends, family and
acquaintances to connect with you at Kenlighten.

Happy networking and knowledge sharing!

Uma

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[tech4all] Surrogate Robot attends school

2011-01-22T14:24:00.000-08:00

Moscow: A very special student is attending a lesson at Moscow's school number 166: Stepan, a plastic robot, is in the classroom to help a little boy with leukaemia to follow the lesson through his eyes.

In the meantime, the real Stepan, a 12-year-old boy with big blue eyes and brown hair, sits in front of a computer at his home and takes an active part in the lesson with help of his plastic friend.

Stepan Supin has been suffering from leukaemia for two years and his immune system is too fragile to allow him to leave home.

Equipped with a webcam, a microphone and a loudspeaker, the robot broadcasts in real time what happens in the classroom to the computer at the boy's home.

A screen in front of the robot actually allows the human Stepan to intervene at any time to ask for the teacher's clarification or to answer a question, teacher Alla Gevak said.

"We also call our robot Stepan. When the lesson begins, he starts working as an ordinary student and participates very actively," she added.

Since September, the robot has been helping the boy to follow history, Geography, English, and French lessons. Other subjects, such as Russian and mathematics, still require a teacher's visits, Gevak said.

Stepan said he feels like his is actually present in the classroom as he can fully control the robot's movements.

"I can change the robot's speed, to go slower or faster. I can move his head to look left or right. I really feel as if I am in the classroom," Stepan said.

Gevak shares the feeling. "At first it was a bit strange, but we got used to it. During breaks between lessons, Stepan communicates very actively with other students. We treat him as if he is here with us," she said.

For the boy's mother, Nina Supina, this 'presence' is really what matters.

"Children have fun in the classroom, frolic and communicate. Stepan can take part. He lacks it - a little boy's normal life," she said.

Designed in 2008 at a Moscow institute, the robot which costs 3,000 dollars, can receive orders remotely via the Internet from anywhere in the world, the project coordinator Vyacheslav Kravtsov said.

"It can be used in many spheres of life. We intend to use it primarily in the social sphere - in education, healthcare, and for disabled people's remote work," he said.

"There are many disabled people in our country and they need help."

Stepan Supin's school received the robot for free as part of a pilot project launched by its designers.

But no matter how grateful he is to his robot, Stepan said he hopes though to get away from him one day and go back to school like every other boy of his age.

From: http://www.deccanchronicle.com/international/robot-attends-school-489

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[tech4all] What we need is a 365-day government

2011-01-08T12:25:00.000-08:00

What we need is a 365-day government

V. N. Mukundarajan

Is it not time to rethink on this wasteful closure of the governmental system that denies basic services to the citizens, especially the poor? Why should courts have holidays when crores of cases are pending disposal?

Indians love holidays. Secularism may be under threat, but not in respect of religious holidays. I have never heard people complain about holidays for the festivals of their co-religionists. In addition, an occasional bonanza comes in the shape of holidays to mourn the deaths of VIPs, local religious festivals, forced closures during hartals, etc. In Kerala, liquor sales shoot up on the eve of holidays. Since the government is the monopoly vendor of liquor, it is the biggest beneficiary of holidays as its coffers get filled up.

We love official policies — tomes of verbose and jargonistic government literature. But we have no holiday policy. Many commissions and committees have suggested reforms to prevent long shutdowns of the government machinery. But certain things never seem to change. It appears nobody has the guts to take on unionised bureaucracy. Status quo is the preferred option. For the politician, giving offence to anybody would mean less number of votes during elections.

So government offices are shut down continuously for four days for Onam in Kerala, for Pongal in Tamil Nadu, for Puja in West Bengal. Is it not time to rethink on this wasteful closure of the governmental system that denies basic services to the citizens, especially to the poor? Why should courts have holidays when crores of cases are pending disposal?

I am not advocating that people should be denied holidays to celebrate festivals. I don't want to enter into a statistical debate about the number of holidays. But when we envisage a greater role for the government in social and economic development of the nation, the services of the government should be available in an uninterrupted manner.

The government is already doing it in respect of essential services such as hospitals, electricity, water, railways, road, shipping and air transport. Are not the administrative wings of the government also essential in the sense that they deliver vital services?

Is it so complicated that a suitable mechanism cannot be evolved to provide at least skeleton services on holidays? What is lacking is the willingness to change and adapt to the growing expectations of the people for speedier services.

There will be practical difficulties in the beginning as is the case with any kind of reform. But these problems can be surmounted over a period of time. I am sure many employees will be willing to work on holidays provided they are compensated either monetarily or by other incentives. I know many government employees are committed to helping the public in letter and in spirit.

A governmental system that works on all days will help to improve the work culture of the employees and transform governance into a people friendly exercise. People's trust in their government will be enhanced and the politicians will be the ultimate beneficiaries during elections. But, our leaders should lead the way by setting an example of hard work. Frequent disruptions of Parliament and legislatures send a wrong signal to the people.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/article1023204.ece

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[tech4all] Polar icecap melting due to global warming: 2000 to 2010 [3 Attachments]

2011-01-02T10:46:00.000-08:00

[Attachment(s) from Bharath M included below]

The Polar Ice Cap as it was in January, 2000.

The Polar Ice Cap is shown in December, 2010.

Lost in time: the shrinking of the Polar Ice Cap is shown with the 2000 version in yellow overlaying the 2010 photo.

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Attachment(s) from Bharath M

3 of 3 Photo(s)

pcap2000.jpg

pcap2010.jpg

pcap2000vs2010.jpg

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[tech4all] Logical fallacies

2011-01-02T00:30:00.000-08:00

What is a logical fallacy?
All arguments have the same basic structure: A therefore B. They begin with one or more premises (A), which is a fact or assumption upon which the argument is based. They then apply a logical principle (therefore) to arrive at a conclusion (B). An example of a logical principle is that of equivalence. For example, if you begin with the premises that A=B and B=C, you can apply the logical principle of equivalence to conclude that A=C. A logical fallacy is a false or incorrect logical principle. An argument that is based upon a logical fallacy is therefore not valid. It is important to note that if the logic of an argument is valid then the conclusion must also be valid, which means that if the premises are all true then the conclusion must also be true. Valid logic applied to one or more false premises, however, leads to an invalid argument. Also, if an argument is not valid the conclusion may, by chance, still be true.

Top 20 Logical Fallacies (in alphabetical order)

Ad hominem
An ad hominem argument is any that attempts to counter another's claims or conclusions by attacking the person, rather than addressing the argument itself. True believers will often commit this fallacy by countering the arguments of skeptics by stating that skeptics are closed minded. Skeptics, on the other hand, may fall into the trap of dismissing the claims of UFO believers, for example, by stating that people who believe in UFO's are crazy or stupid. A common form of this fallacy is also frequently present in the arguments of conspiracy theorists (who also rely heavily on ad-hoc reasoning). For example, they may argue that the government must be lying because they are corrupt. It should be noted that simply calling someone a name or otherwise making an ad hominem attack is not in itself a logical fallacy. It is only a fallacy to claim that an argument is wrong because of a negative attribute of someone making the argument. (i.e. "John is a jerk." is not a fallacy. "John is wrong because he is a jerk." is a logical fallacy.) The term "poisoning the well" also refers to a form of ad hominem fallacy. This is an attempt to discredit the argument of another by implying that they possess an unsavory trait, or that they are affiliated with other beliefs or people that are wrong or unpopular. A common form of this also has its own name – Godwin's Law or the reductio ad Hitlerum. This refers to an attempt at poisoning the well by drawing an analogy between another's position and Hitler or the Nazis.

Ad ignorantiam
The argument from ignorance basically states that a specific belief is true because we don't know that it isn't true. Defenders of extrasensory perception, for example, will often overemphasize how much we do not know about the human brain. It is therefore possible, they argue, that the brain may be capable of transmitting signals at a distance. UFO proponents are probably the most frequent violators of this fallacy. Almost all UFO eyewitness evidence is ultimately an argument from ignorance – lights or objects sighted in the sky are unknown, and therefore they are alien spacecraft. Intelligent design is almost entirely based upon this fallacy. The core argument for intelligent design is that there are biological structures that have not been fully explained by evolution, therefore a powerful intelligent designer must have created them. In order to make a positive claim, however, positive evidence for the specific claim must be presented. The absence of another explanation only means that we do not know – it doesn't mean we get to make up a specific explanation.

Argument from authority
The basic structure of such arguments is as follows: Professor X believes A, Professor X speaks from authority, therefore A is true. Often this argument is implied by emphasizing the many years of experience, or the formal degrees held by the individual making a specific claim. The converse of this argument is sometimes used, that someone does not possess authority, and therefore their claims must be false. (This may also be considered an ad-hominen logical fallacy – see below.) In practice this can be a complex logical fallacy to deal with. It is legitimate to consider the training and experience of an individual when examining their assessment of a particular claim. Also, a consensus of scientific opinion does carry some legitimate authority. But it is still possible for highly educated individuals, and a broad consensus to be wrong – speaking from authority does not make a claim true. This logical fallacy crops up in more subtle ways also. For example, UFO proponents have argued that UFO sightings by airline pilots should be given special weight because pilots are trained observers, are reliable characters, and are trained not to panic in emergencies. In essence, they are arguing that we should trust the pilot's authority as an eye witness. There are many subtypes of the argument from authority, essentially referring to the implied source of authority. A common example is the argument ad populi – a belief must be true because it is popular, essentially assuming the authority of the masses. Another example is the argument from antiquity – a belief has been around for a long time and therefore must be true.

Argument from final Consequences
Such arguments (also called teleological) are based on a reversal of cause and effect, because they argue that something is caused by the ultimate effect that it has, or purpose that is serves. Christian creationists have argued, for example, that evolution must be wrong because if it were true it would lead to immorality. One type of teleological argument is the argument from design. For example, the universe has all the properties necessary to support life, therefore it was designed specifically to support life (and therefore had a designer).

Argument from Personal Incredulity
I cannot explain or understand this, therefore it cannot be true. Creationists are fond of arguing that they cannot imagine the complexity of life resulting from blind evolution, but that does not mean life did not evolve.

Confusing association with causation
This is similar to the post-hoc fallacy in that it assumes cause and effect for two variables simply because they occur together. This fallacy is often used to give a statistical correlation a causal interpretation. For example, during the 1990's both religious attendance and illegal drug use have been on the rise. It would be a fallacy to conclude that therefore, religious attendance causes illegal drug use. It is also possible that drug use leads to an increase in religious attendance, or that both drug use and religious attendance are increased by a third variable, such as an increase in societal unrest. It is also possible that both variables are independent of one another, and it is mere coincidence that they are both increasing at the same time. This fallacy, however, has a tendency to be abused, or applied inappropriately, to deny all statistical evidence. In fact this constitutes a logical fallacy in itself, the denial of causation. This abuse takes two basic forms. The first is to deny the significance of correlations that are demonstrated with prospective controlled data, such as would be acquired during a clinical experiment. The problem with assuming cause and effect from mere correlation is not that a causal relationship is impossible, it's just that there are other variables that must be considered and not ruled out a-priori. A controlled trial, however, by its design attempts to control for as many variables as possible in order to maximize the probability that a positive correlation is in fact due to a causation. Further, even with purely epidemiological, or statistical, evidence it is still possible to build a strong scientific case for a specific cause. The way to do this is to look at multiple independent correlations to see if they all point to the same causal relationship. For example, it was observed that cigarette smoking correlates with getting lung cancer. The tobacco industry, invoking the "correlation is not causation" logical fallacy, argued that this did not prove causation. They offered as an alternate explanation "factor x", a third variable that causes both smoking and lung cancer. But we can make predictions based upon the smoking causes cancer hypothesis. If this is the correct causal relationship, then duration of smoking should correlate with cancer risk, quitting smoking should decrease cancer risk, smoking unfiltered cigarettes should have a higher cancer risk than filtered cigarettes, etc. If all of these correlations turn out to be true, which they are, then we can triangulate to the smoking causes cancer hypothesis as the most likely possible causal relationship and it is not a logical fallacy to conclude from this evidence that smoking probably causes lung cancer.

Confusing currently unexplained with unexplainable
Because we do not currently have an adequate explanation for a phenomenon does not mean that it is forever unexplainable, or that it therefore defies the laws of nature or requires a paranormal explanation. An example of this is the "God of the Gapsâ" strategy of creationists that whatever we cannot currently explain is unexplainable and was therefore an act of god.

False Continuum
The idea that because there is no definitive demarcation line between two extremes, that the distinction between the extremes is not real or meaningful: There is a fuzzy line between cults and religion, therefore they are really the same thing.

False Dichotomy
Arbitrarily reducing a set of many possibilities to only two. For example, evolution is not possible, therefore we must have been created (assumes these are the only two possibilities). This fallacy can also be used to oversimplify a continuum of variation to two black and white choices. For example, science and pseudoscience are not two discrete entities, but rather the methods and claims of all those who attempt to explain reality fall along a continuum from one extreme to the other.

Inconsistency
Applying criteria or rules to one belief, claim, argument, or position but not to others. For example, some consumer advocates argue that we need stronger regulation of prescription drugs to ensure their safety and effectiveness, but at the same time argue that medicinal herbs should be sold with no regulation for either safety or effectiveness.

Non-Sequitur
In Latin this term translates to "doesn't follow". This refers to an argument in which the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises. In other words, a logical connection is implied where none exists.

Post-hoc ergo propter hoc
This fallacy follows the basic format of: A preceded B, therefore A caused B, and therefore assumes cause and effect for two events just because they are temporally related (the latin translates to "after this, therefore because of this").

Reductio ad absurdum
In formal logic, the reductio ad absurdum is a legitimate argument. It follows the form that if the premises are assumed to be true it necessarily leads to an absurd (false) conclusion and therefore one or more premises must be false. The term is now often used to refer to the abuse of this style of argument, by stretching the logic in order to force an absurd conclusion. For example a UFO enthusiast once argued that if I am skeptical about the existence of alien visitors, I must also be skeptical of the existence of the Great Wall of China, since I have not personally seen either. This is a false reductio ad absurdum because he is ignoring evidence other than personal eyewitness evidence, and also logical inference. In short, being skeptical of UFO's does not require rejecting the existence of the Great Wall.

Slippery Slope
This logical fallacy is the argument that a position is not consistent or tenable because accepting the position means that the extreme of the position must also be accepted. But moderate positions do not necessarily lead down the slippery slope to the extreme.

Special pleading, or ad-hoc reasoning
This is a subtle fallacy which is often difficult to recognize. In essence, it is the arbitrary introduction of new elements into an argument in order to fix them so that they appear valid. A good example of this is the ad-hoc dismissal of negative test results. For example, one might point out that ESP has never been demonstrated under adequate test conditions, therefore ESP is not a genuine phenomenon. Defenders of ESP have attempted to counter this argument by introducing the arbitrary premise that ESP does not work in the presence of skeptics. This fallacy is often taken to ridiculous extremes, and more and more bizarre ad hoc elements are added to explain experimental failures or logical inconsistencies.

Straw Man
Arguing against a position which you create specifically to be easy to argue against, rather than the position actually held by those who oppose your point of view.

Tautology
Tautology is an argument that utilizes circular reasoning, which means that the conclusion is also its own premise. The structure of such arguments is A=B therefore A=B, although the premise and conclusion might be formulated differently so it is not immediately apparent as such. For example, saying that therapeutic touch works because it manipulates the life force is a tautology because the definition of therapeutic touch is the alleged manipulation (without touching) of the life force.

The Moving Goalpost
A method of denial arbitrarily moving the criteria for "proof" or acceptance out of range of whatever evidence currently exists.

Tu quoque
Literally, you too. This is an attempt to justify wrong action because someone else also does it. "My evidence may be invalid, but so is yours."

Unstated Major Premise
This fallacy occurs when one makes an argument which assumes a premise which is not explicitly stated. For example, arguing that we should label food products with their cholesterol content because Americans have high cholesterol assumes that: 1) cholesterol in food causes high serum cholesterol; 2) labeling will reduce consumption of cholesterol; and 3) that having a high serum cholesterol is unhealthy. This fallacy is also sometimes called begging the question.

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[tech4all] camera quality comparision

2010-12-29T23:11:00.000-08:00

Hi Guys,

I found this website with which you can compare the quality of almost all the latest camera out there

http://www.digitalversus.com/duels.php?ty=1&ma1=16&mo1=292&p1=1790&ma2=71&mo2=1147&p2=8954&ph=2

Thanks!

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[tech4all] How to apply for a USA Student Visa

2010-12-07T00:59:00.000-08:00

How to apply for a USA Student Visa

Download the F-1 Student Visa Application Guide.
Select where in the Unites States of America you would like to live and study.
Choose the type of school you would like like to attend, such as: University, College, Graduate School, ESL (English as Second Language) or Vocational School.
Contact the school and start the admission process.
Upon acceptance by school, the school will issue you an I-20 form (the required document you need to apply for F-1 student visa).
With the I-20 form and the F-1 Visa Application Guide you can apply for a student visa at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate. If you are already in the Unites States you may be allowed change your immigration status to student.
You may be legally authorized to work in the United States while on a F-1 student visa.

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[tech4all] The genius of swarms

2010-11-30T10:49:00.000-08:00

The Genius of Swarms

A single ant or bee isn't smart, but their colonies are. The study of swarm intelligence is providing insights that can help humans manage complex systems, from truck routing to military robots.

By Peter Miller

National Geographic Staff

I used to think ants knew what they were doing. The ones marching across my kitchen counter looked so confident, I just figured they had a plan, knew where they were going and what needed to be done. How else could ants organize highways, build elaborate nests, stage epic raids, and do all the other things ants do?

Turns out I was wrong. Ants aren't clever little engineers, architects, or warriors after all—at least not as individuals. When it comes to deciding what to do next, most ants don't have a clue. "If you watch an ant try to accomplish something, you'll be impressed by how inept it is," says Deborah M. Gordon, a biologist at Stanford University.

How do we explain, then, the success of Earth's 12,000 or so known ant species? They must have learned something in 140 million years.

"Ants aren't smart," Gordon says. "Ant colonies are." A colony can solve problems unthinkable for individual ants, such as finding the shortest path to the best food source, allocating workers to different tasks, or defending a territory from neighbors. As individuals, ants might be tiny dummies, but as colonies they respond quickly and effectively to their environment. They do it with something called swarm intelligence.

Where this intelligence comes from raises a fundamental question in nature: How do the simple actions of individuals add up to the complex behavior of a group? How do hundreds of honeybees make a critical decision about their hive if many of them disagree? What enables a school of herring to coordinate its movements so precisely it can change direction in a flash, like a single, silvery organism? The collective abilities of such animals—none of which grasps the big picture, but each of which contributes to the group's success—seem miraculous even to the biologists who know them best. Yet during the past few decades, researchers have come up with intriguing insights.

One key to an ant colony, for example, is that no one's in charge. No generals command ant warriors. No managers boss ant workers. The queen plays no role except to lay eggs. Even with half a million ants, a colony functions just fine with no management at all—at least none that we would recognize. It relies instead upon countless interactions between individual ants, each of which is following simple rules of thumb. Scientists describe such a system as self-organizing.

Consider the problem of job allocation. In the Arizona desert where Deborah Gordon studies red harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex barbatus), a colony calculates each morning how many workers to send out foraging for food. The number can change, depending on conditions. Have foragers recently discovered a bonanza of tasty seeds? More ants may be needed to haul the bounty home. Was the nest damaged by a storm last night? Additional maintenance workers may be held back to make repairs. An ant might be a nest worker one day, a trash collector the next. But how does a colony make such adjustments if no one's in charge? Gordon has a theory.

Ants communicate by touch and smell. When one ant bumps into another, it sniffs with its antennae to find out if the other belongs to the same nest and where it has been working. (Ants that work outside the nest smell different from those that stay inside.) Before they leave the nest each day, foragers normally wait for early morning patrollers to return. As patrollers enter the nest, they touch antennae briefly with foragers.

"When a forager has contact with a patroller, it's a stimulus for the forager to go out," Gordon says. "But the forager needs several contacts no more than ten seconds apart before it will go out."

To see how this works, Gordon and her collaborator Michael Greene of the University of Colorado at Denver captured patroller ants as they left a nest one morning. After waiting half an hour, they simulated the ants' return by dropping glass beads into the nest entrance at regular intervals—some coated with patroller scent, some with maintenance worker scent, some with no scent. Only the beads coated with patroller scent stimulated foragers to leave the nest. Their conclusion: Foragers use the rate of their encounters with patrollers to tell if it's safe to go out. (If you bump into patrollers at the right rate, it's time to go foraging. If not, better wait. It might be too windy, or there might be a hungry lizard waiting out there.) Once the ants start foraging and bringing back food, other ants join the effort, depending on the rate at which they encounter returning foragers.

"A forager won't come back until it finds something," Gordon says. "The less food there is, the longer it takes the forager to find it and get back. The more food there is, the faster it comes back. So nobody's deciding whether it's a good day to forage. The collective is, but no particular ant is."

That's how swarm intelligence works: simple creatures following simple rules, each one acting on local information. No ant sees the big picture. No ant tells any other ant what to do. Some ant species may go about this with more sophistication than others. (Temnothorax albipennis, for example, can rate the quality of a potential nest site using multiple criteria.) But the bottom line, says Iain Couzin, a biologist at Oxford and Princeton Universities, is that no leadership is required. "Even complex behavior may be coordinated by relatively simple interactions," he says.

Inspired by the elegance of this idea, Marco Dorigo, a computer scientist at the Université Libre in Brussels, used his knowledge of ant behavior in 1991 to create mathematical procedures for solving particularly complex human problems, such as routing trucks, scheduling airlines, or guiding military robots.

In Houston, for example, a company named American Air Liquide has been using an ant-based strategy to manage a complex business problem. The company produces industrial and medical gases, mostly nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen, at about a hundred locations in the United States and delivers them to 6,000 sites, using pipelines, railcars, and 400 trucks. Deregulated power markets in some regions (the price of electricity changes every 15 minutes in parts of Texas) add yet another layer of complexity.

"Right now in Houston, the price is $44 a megawatt for an industrial customer," says Charles N. Harper, who oversees the supply system at Air Liquide. "Last night the price went up to $64, and Monday when the cold front came through, it went up to $210." The company needed a way to pull it all together.

Working with the Bios Group (now NuTech Solutions), a firm that specialized in artificial intelligence, Air Liquide developed a computer model based on algorithms inspired by the foraging behavior of Argentine ants (Linepithema humile), a species that deposits chemical substances called pheromones.

"When these ants bring food back to the nest, they lay a pheromone trail that tells other ants to go get more food," Harper explains. "The pheromone trail gets reinforced every time an ant goes out and comes back, kind of like when you wear a trail in the forest to collect wood. So we developed a program that sends out billions of software ants to find out where the pheromone trails are strongest for our truck routes."

Ants had evolved an efficient method to find the best routes in their neighborhoods. Why not follow their example? So Air Liquide combined the ant approach with other artificial intelligence techniques to consider every permutation of plant scheduling, weather, and truck routing—millions of possible decisions and outcomes a day. Every night, forecasts of customer demand and manufacturing costs are fed into the model.

"It takes four hours to run, even with the biggest computers we have," Harper says. "But at six o'clock every morning we get a solution that says how we're going to manage our day."

For truck drivers, the new system took some getting used to. Instead of delivering gas from the plant closest to a customer, as they used to do, drivers were now asked to pick up shipments from whichever plant was making gas at the lowest delivered price, even if it was farther away.

"You want me to drive a hundred miles? To the drivers, it wasn't intuitive," Harper says. But for the company, the savings have been impressive. "It's huge. It's actually huge."

Other companies also have profited by imitating ants. In Italy and Switzerland, fleets of trucks carrying milk and dairy products, heating oil, and groceries all use ant-foraging rules to find the best routes for deliveries. In England and France, telephone companies have made calls go through faster on their networks by programming messages to deposit virtual pheromones at switching stations, just as ants leave signals for other ants to show them the best trails.

In the U.S., Southwest Airlines has tested an ant-based model to improve service at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. With about 200 aircraft a day taking off and landing on two runways and using gates at three concourses, the company wanted to make sure that each plane got in and out as quickly as possible, even if it arrived early or late.

"People don't like being only 500 yards away from a gate and having to sit out there until another aircraft leaves," says Doug Lawson of Southwest. So Lawson created a computer model of the airport, giving each aircraft the ability to remember how long it took to get into and away from each gate. Then he set the model in motion to simulate a day's activity.

"The planes are like ants searching for the best gate," he says. But rather than leaving virtual pheromones along the way, each aircraft remembers the faster gates and forgets the slower ones. After many simulations, using real data to vary arrival and departure times, each plane learned how to avoid an intolerable wait on the tarmac. Southwest was so pleased with the outcome, it may use a similar model to study the ticket counter area.

When it comes to swarm intelligence, ants aren't the only insects with something useful to teach us. On a small, breezy island off the southern coast of Maine, Thomas Seeley, a biologist at Cornell University, has been looking into the uncanny ability of honeybees to make good decisions. With as many as 50,000 workers in a single hive, honeybees have evolved ways to work through individual differences of opinion to do what's best for the colony. If only people could be as effective in boardrooms, church committees, and town meetings, Seeley says, we could avoid problems making decisions in our own lives.

During the past decade, Seeley, Kirk Visscher of the University of California, Riverside, and others have been studying colonies of honeybees (Apis mellifera) to see how they choose a new home. In late spring, when a hive gets too crowded, a colony normally splits, and the queen, some drones, and about half the workers fly a short distance to cluster on a tree branch. There the bees bivouac while a small percentage of them go searching for new real estate. Ideally, the site will be a cavity in a tree, well off the ground, with a small entrance hole facing south, and lots of room inside for brood and honey. Once a colony selects a site, it usually won't move again, so it has to make the right choice.

To find out how, Seeley's team applied paint dots and tiny plastic tags to identify all 4,000 bees in each of several small swarms that they ferried to Appledore Island, home of the Shoals Marine Laboratory. There, in a series of experiments, they released each swarm to locate nest boxes they'd placed on one side of the half-mile-long (one kilometer) island, which has plenty of shrubs but almost no trees or other places for nests.

In one test they put out five nest boxes, four that weren't quite big enough and one that was just about perfect. Scout bees soon appeared at all five. When they returned to the swarm, each performed a waggle dance urging other scouts to go have a look. (These dances include a code giving directions to a box's location.) The strength of each dance reflected the scout's enthusiasm for the site. After a while, dozens of scouts were dancing their little feet off, some for one site, some for another, and a small cloud of bees was buzzing around each box.

The decisive moment didn't take place in the main cluster of bees, but out at the boxes, where scouts were building up. As soon as the number of scouts visible near the entrance to a box reached about 15—a threshold confirmed by other experiments—the bees at that box sensed that a quorum had been reached, and they returned to the swarm with the news.

"It was a race," Seeley says. "Which site was going to build up 15 bees first?"

Scouts from the chosen box then spread through the swarm, signaling that it was time to move. Once all the bees had warmed up, they lifted off for their new home, which, to no one's surprise, turned out to be the best of the five boxes.

The bees' rules for decision-making—seek a diversity of options, encourage a free competition among ideas, and use an effective mechanism to narrow choices—so impressed Seeley that he now uses them at Cornell as chairman of his department.

"I've applied what I've learned from the bees to run faculty meetings," he says. To avoid going into a meeting with his mind made up, hearing only what he wants to hear, and pressuring people to conform, Seeley asks his group to identify all the possibilities, kick their ideas around for a while, then vote by secret ballot. "It's exactly what the swarm bees do, which gives a group time to let the best ideas emerge and win. People are usually quite amenable to that."

In fact, almost any group that follows the bees' rules will make itself smarter, says James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds. "The analogy is really quite powerful. The bees are predicting which nest site will be best, and humans can do the same thing, even in the face of exceptionally complex decisions." Investors in the stock market, scientists on a research project, even kids at a county fair guessing the number of beans in a jar can be smart groups, he says, if their members are diverse, independent minded, and use a mechanism such as voting, auctioning, or averaging to reach a collective decision.

Take bettors at a horse race. Why are they so accurate at predicting the outcome of a race? At the moment the horses leave the starting gate, the odds posted on the pari-mutuel board, which are calculated from all bets put down, almost always predict the race's outcome: Horses with the lowest odds normally finish first, those with second lowest odds finish second, and so on. The reason, Surowiecki says, is that pari-mutuel betting is a nearly perfect machine for tapping into the wisdom of the crowd.

"If you ever go to the track, you find a really diverse group, experts who spend all day perusing daily race forms, people who know something about some kinds of horses, and others who are betting at random, like the woman who only likes black horses," he says. Like bees trying to make a decision, bettors gather all kinds of information, disagree with one another, and distill their collective judgment when they place their bets.

That's why it's so rare to win on a long shot.

There's a small park near the White House in Washington, D.C., where I like to watch flocks of pigeons swirl over the traffic and trees. Sooner or later, the birds come to rest on ledges of buildings surrounding the park. Then something disrupts them, and they're off again in synchronized flight.

The birds don't have a leader. No pigeon is telling the others what to do. Instead, they're each paying close attention to the pigeons next to them, each bird following simple rules as they wheel across the sky. These rules add up to another kind of swarm intelligence—one that has less to do with making decisions than with precisely coordinating movement.

Craig Reynolds, a computer graphics researcher, was curious about what these rules might be. So in 1986 he created a deceptively simple steering program called boids. In this simulation, generic birdlike objects, or boids, were each given three instructions: 1) avoid crowding nearby boids, 2) fly in the average direction of nearby boids, and 3) stay close to nearby boids. The result, when set in motion on a computer screen, was a convincing simulation of flocking, including lifelike and unpredictable movements.

At the time, Reynolds was looking for ways to depict animals realistically in TV shows and films. (Batman Returns in 1992 was the first movie to use his approach, portraying a swarm of bats and an army of penguins.) Today he works at Sony doing research for games, such as an algorithm that simulates in real time as many as 15,000 interacting birds, fish, or people.

By demonstrating the power of self-organizing models to mimic swarm behavior, Reynolds was also blazing the trail for robotics engineers. A team of robots that could coordinate its actions like a flock of birds could offer significant advantages over a solitary robot. Spread out over a large area, a group could function as a powerful mobile sensor net, gathering information about what's out there. If the group encountered something unexpected, it could adjust and respond quickly, even if the robots in the group weren't very sophisticated, just as ants are able to come up with various options by trial and error. If one member of the group were to break down, others could take its place. And, most important, control of the group could be decentralized, not dependent on a leader.

"In biology, if you look at groups with large numbers, there are very few examples where you have a central agent," says Vijay Kumar, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. "Everything is very distributed: They don't all talk to each other. They act on local information. And they're all anonymous. I don't care who moves the chair, as long as somebody moves the chair. To go from one robot to multiple robots, you need all three of those ideas."

Within five years Kumar hopes to put a networked team of robotic vehicles in the field. One purpose might be as first responders. "Let's say there's a 911 call," he says. "The fire alarm goes off. You don't want humans to respond. You want machines to respond, to tell you what's happening. Before you send firemen into a burning building, why not send in a group of robots?"

Taking this idea one step further, Marco Dorigo's group in Brussels is leading a European effort to create a "swarmanoid," a group of cooperating robots with complementary abilities: "foot-bots" to transport things on the ground, "hand-bots" to climb walls and manipulate objects, and "eye-bots" to fly around, providing information to the other units.

The military is eager to acquire similar capabilities. On January 20, 2004, researchers released a swarm of 66 pint-size robots into an empty office building at Fort A. P. Hill, a training center near Fredericksburg, Virginia. The mission: Find targets hidden in the building.

Zipping down the main hallway, the foot-long (0.3 meter) red robots pivoted this way and that on their three wheels, resembling nothing so much as large insects. Eight sonars on each unit helped them avoid collisions with walls and other robots. As they spread out, entering one room after another, each robot searched for objects of interest with a small, Web-style camera. When one robot encountered another, it used wireless network gear to exchange information. ("Hey, I've already explored that part of the building. Look somewhere else.")

In the back of one room, a robot spotted something suspicious: a pink ball in an open closet (the swarm had been trained to look for anything pink). The robot froze, sending an image to its human supervisor. Soon several more robots arrived to form a perimeter around the pink intruder. Within half an hour, all six of the hidden objects had been found. The research team conducting the experiment declared the run a success. Then they started a new test.

The demonstration was part of the Centibots project, an investigation to see if as many as a hundred robots could collaborate on a mission. If they could, teams of robots might someday be sent into a hostile village to flush out terrorists or locate prisoners; into an earthquake-damaged building to find victims; onto chemical-spill sites to examine hazardous waste; or along borders to watch for intruders. Military agencies such as DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) have funded a number of robotics programs using collaborative flocks of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, schools of torpedo-shaped underwater gliders, and herds of unmanned ground vehicles. But at the time, this was the largest swarm of robots ever tested.

"When we started Centibots, we were all thinking, this is a crazy idea, it's impossible to do," says Régis Vincent, a researcher at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. "Now we're looking to see if we can do it with a thousand robots."

In nature, of course, animals travel in even larger numbers. That's because, as members of a big group, whether it's a flock, school, or herd, individuals increase their chances of detecting predators, finding food, locating a mate, or following a migration route. For these animals, coordinating their movements with one another can be a matter of life or death.

"It's much harder for a predator to avoid being spotted by a thousand fish than it is to avoid being spotted by one," says Daniel Grünbaum, a biologist at the University of Washington. "News that a predator is approaching spreads quickly through a school because fish sense from their neighbors that something's going on."

When a predator strikes a school of fish, the group is capable of scattering in patterns that make it almost impossible to track any individual. It might explode in a flash, create a kind of moving bubble around the predator, or fracture into multiple blobs, before coming back together and swimming away.

Animals on land do much the same, as Karsten Heuer, a wildlife biologist, observed in 2003, when he and his wife, Leanne Allison, followed the vast Porcupine caribou herd (Rangifer tarandus granti) for five months. Traveling more than a thousand miles (1,600 kilometers) with the animals, they documented the migration from winter range in Canada's northern Yukon Territory to calving grounds in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"It's difficult to describe in words, but when the herd was on the move it looked very much like a cloud shadow passing over the landscape, or a mass of dominoes toppling over at the same time and changing direction," Karsten says. "It was as though every animal knew what its neighbor was going to do, and the neighbor beside that and beside that. There was no anticipation or reaction. No cause and effect. It just was."

One day, as the herd funneled through a gully at the tree line, Karsten and Leanne spotted a wolf creeping up. The herd responded with a classic swarm defense.

"As soon as the wolf got within a certain distance of the caribou, the herd's alertness just skyrocketed," Karsten says. "Now there was no movement. Every animal just stopped, completely vigilant and watching." A hundred yards (90 meters) closer, and the wolf crossed another threshold. "The nearest caribou turned and ran, and that response moved like a wave through the entire herd until they were all running. Reaction times shifted into another realm. Animals closest to the wolf at the back end of the herd looked like a blanket unraveling and tattering, which, from the wolf's perspective, must have been extremely confusing." The wolf chased one caribou after another, losing ground with each change of target. In the end, the herd escaped over the ridge, and the wolf was left panting and gulping snow.

For each caribou, the stakes couldn't have been higher, yet the herd's evasive maneuvers displayed not panic but precision. (Imagine the chaos if a hungry wolf were released into a crowd of people.) Every caribou knew when it was time to run and in which direction to go, even if it didn't know exactly why. No leader was responsible for coordinating the rest of the herd. Instead each animal was following simple rules evolved over thousands of years of wolf attacks.

That's the wonderful appeal of swarm intelligence. Whether we're talking about ants, bees, pigeons, or caribou, the ingredients of smart group behavior—decentralized control, response to local cues, simple rules of thumb—add up to a shrewd strategy to cope with complexity.

"We don't even know yet what else we can do with this," says Eric Bonabeau, a complexity theorist and the chief scientist at Icosystem Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "We're not used to solving decentralized problems in a decentralized way. We can't control an emergent phenomenon like traffic by putting stop signs and lights everywhere. But the idea of shaping traffic as a self-organizing system, that's very exciting."

Social and political groups have already adopted crude swarm tactics. During mass protests eight years ago in Seattle, anti-globalization activists used mobile communications devices to spread news quickly about police movements, turning an otherwise unruly crowd into a "smart mob" that was able to disperse and re-form like a school of fish.

The biggest changes may be on the Internet. Consider the way Google uses group smarts to find what you're looking for. When you type in a search query, Google surveys billions of Web pages on its index servers to identify the most relevant ones. It then ranks them by the number of pages that link to them, counting links as votes (the most popular sites get weighted votes, since they're more likely to be reliable). The pages that receive the most votes are listed first in the search results. In this way, Google says, it "uses the collective intelligence of the Web to determine a page's importance."

Wikipedia, a free collaborative encyclopedia, has also proved to be a big success, with millions of articles in more than 200 languages about everything under the sun, each of which can be contributed by anyone or edited by anyone. "It's now possible for huge numbers of people to think together in ways we never imagined a few decades ago," says Thomas Malone of MIT's new Center for Collective Intelligence. "No single person knows everything that's needed to deal with problems we face as a society, such as health care or climate change, but collectively we know far more than we've been able to tap so far."

Such thoughts underline an important truth about collective intelligence: Crowds tend to be wise only if individual members act responsibly and make their own decisions. A group won't be smart if its members imitate one another, slavishly follow fads, or wait for someone to tell them what to do. When a group is being intelligent, whether it's made up of ants or attorneys, it relies on its members to do their own part. For those of us who sometimes wonder if it's really worth recycling that extra bottle to lighten our impact on the planet, the bottom line is that our actions matter, even if we don't see how.

Think about a honeybee as she walks around inside the hive. If a cold wind hits the hive, she'll shiver to generate heat and, in the process, help to warm the nearby brood. She has no idea that hundreds of workers in other parts of the hive are doing the same thing at the same time to the benefit of the next generation.

"A honeybee never sees the big picture any more than you or I do," says Thomas Seeley, the bee expert. "None of us knows what society as a whole needs, but we look around and say, oh, they need someone to volunteer at school, or mow the church lawn, or help in a political campaign."

If you're looking for a role model in a world of complexity, you could do worse than to imitate a bee.

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[tech4all] Cocoa trees in tamilnadu

2010-11-20T22:15:00.000-08:00

Cocoa is the tree which produces the cocoa seed.Cocoa seed is used in the making of chocolates and all choco related items.In the world market,cocoa seed production is falling behind demand,so there is a huge demand for cocoa beans.Chocloate companies like cadbury sell cocoa seedlings to farmers for 4rs per seedling.Cocoa does not need much water and can be planted below tree cover of coconut or other large trees.Cocoa yields profit of minimum 6 times the investment in 2-3years. TN govt itself is encouraging farmers to grow this plant.If you have a large garden space,planting this can provide good revenue.

Forward this to your friends,maybe someone can benefit from this plant.

Worldwide, there is a huge demand for cocoa and this demand is going to explode in the coming years.
Dr shapiro of IBM research labs says,(BBC ink)

"In late 2007, it became very apparent to me that we would not have a continuous supply of cocoa going into the future if we did not intervene on a massive scale to secure our supply chain."

Vietnamese farmers' success story with the Cocoa plant. (link)

Almost ripe cocoa beans on a 3 year old tree. Persistent international demand has pushed up prices, and farmers are increasingly relying on the crop.
"A 1000 dollar investment in cocoa saplings can gain a yield for the farmers after 2-3 years of 6000 dollars"

Cocoa cultivating farmer testimonial from tamilnadu, video link.

The tamilnadu agriculture minister stated this in 2009,(The Hindu article link)

"The State produces just 200 kg of cocoa seeds per annum while the neighbouring states such as Karnataka (8,000 tonnes), Kerala (7,000) and Andhra Pradesh (2,500) produce much more. We need to improve this," he insisted.

Mr. Arumugam said that cocoa could generate revenue of Rs. 1.10 lakh per hectare per annum for which the expenditure was Rs. 15,000.

This page provides the list of nurseries in Tamilnadu, some of them may sell cocoa seeds for planting.

Moreover, TN govt has signed up an MOU with Cadbury to distribute seeds to farmers at very affordable price and also provide technical assistance to the growers.That means Cadbury themselves would buy the produced seeds from the farmers. (Article link)

All these mean that TN farmers can grow cocoa plants within coconut farms and arcanut farms.

This government website provides complete details about planting and maintenance stuff.

Please share more details you may have in comments below.

comments

Link: http://www.bharathtech.com/2010/11/growing-cocoa-trees-in-tamil-nadu.html

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[tech4all] Wanted JRF & Project Assistant for DST project

2010-11-14T06:26:00.000-08:00

Wanted JRF & Project Assistant for DST project

http://www.nitt.edu/home/jrf_CA.pdf

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[tech4all] Guinness world record by indian

2010-11-11T21:04:00.000-08:00

Hi, all,

Check the below links for Guinness world record by indian.

http://business.rediff.com/slide-show/2010/nov/10/slide-show-1-cag-nails-a-raja.htm

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/cag-indicts-raja-in-rs-140000-crore-2g-case/134724-37-64.html

2nd record.

http://news.oneindia.in/2010/11/11/cbi-sit-probe-2g-spectrum-scam-affidavit-raja-govt.html

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Re: [tech4all] Wish u Happy Diwali

2010-11-04T07:35:00.000-07:00

wish u a very happy deepavali and to all thanks and regards k.p.ramaswamy

Regards

Ramaswamy.K.P

--- On Tue, 2/11/10, Surendiran.B <surendiran@yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Surendiran.B <surendiran@yahoo.com>
Subject: [tech4all] Wish u Happy Diwali [3 Attachments]
To: surendiran@gmail.com
Date: Tuesday, 2 November, 2010, 11:44 AM

Diwali night is full of lights, may your life be filled with colors and lights of happiness. Happy Diwali!!

May you live your life like the festival of Diwali, happy healthy and wealthy. A Very Very Happy Diwali!!

--
Thanks and Regards,
Surendiran.B,
Ph: 9942761363

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[tech4all] Wish u Happy Diwali [3 Attachments]

2010-11-01T23:14:00.000-07:00

[Attachment(s) from Surendiran.B included below]

Diwali night is full of lights, may your life be filled with colors and lights of happiness. Happy Diwali!!

May you live your life like the festival of Diwali, happy healthy and wealthy. A Very Very Happy Diwali!!

--
Thanks and Regards,
Surendiran.B,
Ph: 9942761363

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Attachment(s) from Surendiran.B

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[tech4all] Mavenz Kenlighten - a social knowledge network for teachers, educators etc.

2010-10-31T23:42:00.000-07:00

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[tech4all] Robot conducts wedding ceremony in Japan

2010-10-23T23:31:00.000-07:00

TOKYO, May 16, 2010

I, Robot, Now Pronounce You Man and Wife

Android Performs Wedding in Tokyo; Manufacturer Says It Wants to Build Robotics That "Touch the Hearts of the People"

I-Fairy, a four-foot tall seated robot with flashing eyes and plastic pigtails and wearing a wreath of flowers, directs a wedding ceremony for groom Tomohiro Shibata, 42, and bride Satoko Inouye, 36, at a Tokyo restaurant Sunday, May 16, 2010. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye)

The wedding was the first time a marriage had been led by a robot, according to the android's manufacturer. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye)

(AP) Almost everyone stood when the bride walked down the aisle in her white gown, but not the wedding conductor, because she was bolted to her chair.

The nuptials at this ceremony were led by "I-Fairy," a 4-foot tall seated robot with flashing eyes and plastic pigtails. Sunday's wedding was the first time a marriage had been led by a robot, according to manufacturer Kokoro Co.

"Please lift the bride's veil," the robot said in a tinny voice, waving its arms in the air as the newlyweds kissed in front of about 50 guests.

The wedding took place at a restaurant in Hibiya Park in central Tokyo, where the I-Fairy wore a wreath of flowers and directed a rooftop ceremony. Wires led out from beneath it to a black curtain a few feet away, where a man crouched and clicked commands into a computer.

Japan has one of the most advanced robotics industries in the world, with the government actively supporting the field for future growth. Industrial models in factories are now standard, but recently Japanese companies are making a push to inject robots into everyday life.

Honda makes a walking child-shaped robot, and other firms have developed them to entertain the elderly or play baseball. Kokoro, whose corporate goal is to "touch the hearts of the people," also makes giant dinosaur robots for exhibitions and lifelike android models that can smile and laugh. The company is a subsidiary of Sanrio Co., which owns the rights to Hello Kitty and other Japanese characters.

"This was a lot of fun. I think that Japanese have a strong sense that robots are our friends. Those in the robot industry mostly understand this, but people mainly want robots near them that serve some purpose," said bride Satoko Inoue, 36, who works at manufacturer Kokoro.

"It would be nice if the robot was a bit more clever, but she is very good at expressing herself," said new husband Tomohiro Shibata, 42, a professor of robotics at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in central Japan.

The I-Fairy sells for about 6.3 million yen ($68,000) and three are in use in Singapore, the U.S. and Japan, according to company spokeswoman Kayako Kido. It has 18 degrees of motion in its arms, and mainly repeats preprogrammed movements and sounds.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/16/tech/main6488799.shtml?tag=reddit

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Re: [tech4all] Wonderful email - Kindly share.

2010-10-13T05:40:00.000-07:00

www.campuscouncil.com is a ad site.

Any authentic reference to support that a id card dropped in to post box will reach the person ?

4degrees in 10 months ? This is definitely wrong. More like 1 degree in 10 years.

Regards

Melchi

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 2:49 PM, Surendiran.B <surendiran@yahoo.com> wrote:

Dear All,

I received a Wonderful e-mail from my friend..I would like to share this to you all....

1. If you see children Begging anywhere in TAMIL NADU please contact
"RED SOCIETY"
9940217816. They will help that children for their studies.

2. There is a Website:
www.friendstosupport.org
Where you can search for any BLOOD GROUP, you will get thousand's of
donor address.

3. Engineering Students can register in www.campuscouncil.com to
attend Off Campus for 40 Companies.

4. Free Education and Free hostel for Handicapped children..!
Contact:- 9842062501 & 9894067506

5. If anyone met with fire accident or people born with problems
in their ear, nose and mouth can get free PLASTIC SURGERY done by
Kodaikanal PASAM Hospital. From 23rd March to 4th April by German
Doctors. Everything is free. Contact : 045420-240668,245732
"Helping Hands are Better than Praying Lips"

6. If you find any important documents like Driving license, Ration
card, Passport, Bank Pass Book, etc., Missed by someone, simply put
them into near by any Post Boxes. They will automatically reach the
owner and Fine will be collected from them.

7. By the next 10 months, our earth will become 4 degrees hotter than what it is
now. Our Himalayan glaciers are melting at rapid rate. So all of you
lend your hands to fight GLOBAL WARMING.

-Plant more Trees.
-Don't waste Water & Electricity.
-Don't use or burn Plastics

8. It costs 38 Trillion dollars to create OXYGEN for 6 months for all
Human beings on earth.
"TREES DO IT FOR FREE"

"Respect them and Save them"

9.Special phone number for Eye bank and Eye donation 04428281919 and
04428271616 (Sankara Nethralaya Eye Bank)

For More information about how to donate eyes plz visit these sites. . .

http://www.kannoli.com/eyebank.html

http://ruraleye.org/

10. Heart Surgery free of cost for children (0-10 yr) Sri Valli Baba
Institute Banglore. Contact : 9916737471

11. Please CHECK WASTAGE OF food
If you have a function/party at your home in India and food gets
wasted, don't hesitate to call 1098 (only in India ) - Its not a Joke
- Child helpline. They will come and collect the food .
Please circulate this message which can help feed many children.
AND LETS TRY TO HELP INDIA BE A BETTER PLACE TO LIVE IN.

__._,_.___

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[tech4all] Wonderful email - Kindly share.

2010-10-13T02:19:00.000-07:00

Dear All,

I received a Wonderful e-mail from my friend..I would like to share this to you all....

1. If you see children Begging anywhere in TAMIL NADU please contact
"RED SOCIETY"
9940217816. They will help that children for their studies.

2. There is a Website:
www.friendstosupport.org
Where you can search for any BLOOD GROUP, you will get thousand's of
donor address.

3. Engineering Students can register in www.campuscouncil.com to
attend Off Campus for 40 Companies.

4. Free Education and Free hostel for Handicapped children..!
Contact:- 9842062501 & 9894067506

5. If anyone met with fire accident or people born with problems
in their ear, nose and mouth can get free PLASTIC SURGERY done by
Kodaikanal PASAM Hospital. From 23rd March to 4th April by German
Doctors. Everything is free. Contact : 045420-240668,245732
"Helping Hands are Better than Praying Lips"

6. If you find any important documents like Driving license, Ration
card, Passport, Bank Pass Book, etc., Missed by someone, simply put
them into near by any Post Boxes. They will automatically reach the
owner and Fine will be collected from them.

7. By the next 10 months, our earth will become 4 degrees hotter than what it is
now. Our Himalayan glaciers are melting at rapid rate. So all of you
lend your hands to fight GLOBAL WARMING.

-Plant more Trees.
-Don't waste Water & Electricity.
-Don't use or burn Plastics

8. It costs 38 Trillion dollars to create OXYGEN for 6 months for all
Human beings on earth.
"TREES DO IT FOR FREE"

"Respect them and Save them"

9.Special phone number for Eye bank and Eye donation 04428281919 and
04428271616 (Sankara Nethralaya Eye Bank)

For More information about how to donate eyes plz visit these sites. . .

http://www.kannoli.com/eyebank.html

http://ruraleye.org/

10. Heart Surgery free of cost for children (0-10 yr) Sri Valli Baba
Institute Banglore. Contact : 9916737471

11. Please CHECK WASTAGE OF food
If you have a function/party at your home in India and food gets
wasted, don't hesitate to call 1098 (only in India ) - Its not a Joke
- Child helpline. They will come and collect the food .
Please circulate this message which can help feed many children.
AND LETS TRY TO HELP INDIA BE A BETTER PLACE TO LIVE IN.

__._,_.___

Reply to sender | Reply to group | Reply via web post | Start a New Topic

Messages in this topic (1)

Recent Activity:

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[tech4all] Ted video: Eben Bayer: Are mushrooms the new plastic?

2010-10-07T02:33:00.000-07:00

Video viewing link:
http://www.ted.com/talks/eben_bayer_are_mushrooms_the_new_plastic.html

Video download link:
http://www.ted.com/talks/download/video/9785/talk/971

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[tech4all] Business in India: A bumpier but freer road

2010-10-03T10:27:00.000-07:00

Business in India

A bumpier but freer road

Despite all the mess and chaos of India, the country's business is booming. This will change the world

Sep 30th 2010 | Delhi

AN INDIAN boss gestures from the lofty window of his steel-and-glass office. Ten years ago, says Pramod Bhasin, "you couldn't even get a cup of coffee around here." Now the area bristles with office blocks. Gurgaon, near Delhi, has swiftly become a global hub for outsourcing. Its recent rural past is not forgotten, however. Villagers still herd goats along its streets; pigs snuffle in the rubbish.

Mr Bhasin, who heads a firm called Genpact, speaks of outsourcing as a dentist might of flossing. Car firms should concentrate on making better cars, he says; most other tasks should be outsourced. Personnel departments, for example, need a few people to handle employees' gripes face-to-face, but form-filling and data entry can be handled more efficiently by specialists. "I've got 10,000 people doing this," he says. "They're good at it."

Genpact began as an internal unit of General Electric before being spun out, better to serve a wider set of customers, in 2005. It helps other organisations do dull things more quickly and cheaply. For example, by analysing the way American hospitals carried out mundane tasks, such as bed-changing and deciding where to put doctors' offices, it was able to point out more efficient ways of using people and equipment. As a result, doctors perform 25% more operations each day. Demand is brisk: Mr Bhasin predicts that his sales could grow from $1.2 billion to $10 billion in the next ten years.

Such vast ambitions are no longer unusual in India. Firms now worth $5 billion expect soon to be worth $30 billion, observes Vijay Govindarajan, of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. The country is in a "global sweet spot", says Nandan Nilekani, a former software mogul who heads a government project, launched on September 29th, to give every Indian an identity number.

India's GDP is expected to grow by 8.5% this year, and could grow even faster. Chetan Ahya and Tanvee Gupta of Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, predict that India's growth will start to outpace China's within three to five years. China will rumble along at 8% rather than double digits; India will rack up successive years of 9-10%. For the next 20-25 years, India will grow faster than any other large country, they expect. Other long-range forecasters paint a similar picture.

Several factors weigh in India's favour. The first is demography. Indians are young (see chart 1). "An ageing world needs workers; a young country has workers," says Mr Nilekani. Previous Asian booms have been powered by a surge in the working-age population. Now it is India's turn. The proportion of Indians aged under 15 or over 64 has declined from 69% in 1995 to 56% this year, says the UN. India's working-age population will increase by 136m by 2020; China's will grow by a mere 23m, says Morgan Stanley (see chart 2).

To be sure, many Indians are poorly educated. There will certainly not be jobs in business-process outsourcing for all. India, unusually for Asia, has not yet made much of a fist of labour-intensive manufacturing for export. But its workforce will stay young and keep growing, and it includes millions of English-speakers.

India's second advantage is that the economic reforms of the early 1990s have unleashed an explosion of pent-up commercial energy. Tariff ramparts have been torn down (see chart 3). The "licence raj"—a system under which it seemed that a businessman could not pick his teeth without a permit—has been swept aside. Private firms have been forced to compete with the world's best. Many have discovered that they can. Exports have shot up.

Indian firms are increasingly global and sometimes world-class. Arcelor Mittal, based in Luxembourg, is the world's largest steel firm. Tata Motors, best known for making cars that cost only $2,000, also owns Jaguar and Land Rover, two luxury brands. Bharti Airtel, a mobile-phone firm with 140m subscribers in India, is rapidly expanding into Africa, too.

China's growth has been largely state-directed. India's, by contrast, is driven by 45m entrepreneurs, says Amit Mitra, the secretary-general of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, a business lobby. He gushes about the energy of India's vast informal sector, and its ability to solve problems. Mr Mitra recalls meeting the owner of an informal suit-cutting business who used, as a kind of collateral, the fact that his brother held a government job. The brother went to the same office every day. So the moneylender could always find him, and that made the suit-cutter creditworthy.

In Dharavi, a Mumbai slum with perhaps 1m inhabitants, many alleys are too narrow to turn a wheelbarrow around. Yet every other doorway seems to lead to a small business. Bhaskar Chaudhary's tiny factory works day and night turning out back pockets, which are whisked to a bigger factory, sewn onto jeans and exported to the Gulf. Business is good. Four years ago Mr Chaudhary had only one (Chinese-made) embroidering machine. Now he has three. He is still only 21 years old.

Indian firms export a lot of services, but their primary focus is on the needs of domestic consumers. Indian shoppers demand goods that are cheap, rather than fancy. Indian "frugal innovators" oblige. Tata Chemicals makes a filter that requires no power and can give a family of five safe drinking water for a month for 30 rupees ($0.65). Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science produced a prototype for a $35 laptop in July. A firm called Ayas Shilpa makes suspension bridges for a tenth of the price of conventional ones. In a country where countless villages are connected to the outside world only by perilous rope bridges across raging rivers, this is a colossal boon.

Indian firms are devising new business models as well as products. HCL Technologies, a software firm, helps clients improve their IT systems on the understanding that if they reap no benefits, they pay nothing. If they do gain, HCL takes a share. "It puts our skin in the game," says Vineet Nayar, the firm's chief executive.

India is the last frontier, says Moon B. Shin, the Korean boss of LG Electronics' Indian subsidiary. By which he means: India has the largest number of people who have not yet bought many electronic goods. LG's annual sales in India are about $3 billion. But what really excites Mr Shin is that they rose by 30% just in the first seven months of this year.

LG started manufacturing in India in the late 1990s. It is now the country's most popular maker of all manner of gizmos. To succeed, it has kept its prices ultra-low and adapted its products to Indian tastes. Since many Indians are vegetarian, it offers a fridge with less freezer space and more drawers for vegetables. Since Indians like their televisions loud, LG affixes powerful speakers. The firm also sells voice-activated washing machines for middle-class families with illiterate maids. Its products are designed to cope with fluctuating power, and its packaging is extra-tough to cope with India's terrible roads.

An elephant can stumble

If India keeps growing as fast as it is now, it will change the world. Optimists predict that it will be the next China, only friendlier and more democratic. Pessimists retort that such forecasts are over-spiced. They point out that India has a lot of catching up to do. China's economy is four times bigger, so that even if India starts to grow faster, it will not overtake China for a long, long time. And they add that Indian businesses face several bottlenecks on the uneven road to growth.

The most obvious of these bottlenecks is lousy infrastructure. Indian roads are awful. Potholes gape; traffic lights don't work. Rural roads are largely unpaved; in cities traffic often snarls to a halt. Cyrus Guzder, who runs a distribution business, complains that long-distance trucks average only about 20kph (12mph). Crossing the border between two Indian states can be more troublesome than crossing an international boundary. Between Kolkata and Mumbai (a distance of 2,000km), a truck must negotiate a couple of dozen checkpoints. Delays and shakedowns by grasping officials add 30% to the cost of road freight, estimates Mr Guzder.

"We have to have our own power backup, water-treatment plants and transport for employees," grumbles Mr Nayar of HCL. As if on cue, the power goes off in his office. Big companies lay on fleets of cars and buses to ferry staff to work. Computer servers need costly extra layers of backup.

India's economy will grow fivefold in the next 20 years, predicts McKinsey, a consultancy. The urban population will double from the 2001 census figure of 290m to perhaps 590m by 2030. McKinsey reckons that merely to keep pace, the country must spend $1.2 trillion on urban infrastructure, or at eight times today's rate. Per person, China's capital spending on cities is roughly seven times greater than India's.

The other worrying bottleneck is a shortage of skills. The workforce may be young and growing, but 40% are illiterate and another 40% failed to complete school. The Boston Consulting Group sees a shortfall of 200,000 engineers, 400,000 other graduates and 150,000 vocationally trained workers in the coming years. Meanwhile, there are 62m surplus workers in agriculture, most of them barely skilled.

India's best universities—the Indian Institutes of Technology—are world class, but there are only 16 of them. Many universities turn out graduates who are good at exams but unaccustomed to thinking about real-world problems. Employers train them for months, at great expense. Then they are ruthlessly poached by rivals.

Public schools are a mess. Supplies disappear. Teachers do not turn up, and even the worst are unsackable: as civil servants, their jobs are constitutionally protected. India's adult literacy rate is only 66%; China's is 93%. Nearly half of children under five are malnourished, which makes it hard for their brains to develop properly. A government scheme to deliver cheap grain to the poor is a national disgrace: two-thirds of the grain is stolen or adulterated.

The shortage of skills is wonderful for those who have them. Their wages are surging. The technologically minded young are getting cocky, their elders grumble. They expect stimulation as well as pay. "They are willing to walk away from a bad or boring job," marvels Chaitanya Kalbag of Business Today, a magazine that recently published a cover story on "Brats at Work".

The lack of skilled workers makes it harder to bring infrastructure up to the mark. Builders, electricians and plumbers are scarce. Cock-ups on building sites, such as lifts being installed upside down, are plentiful. The run-up to the Commonwealth games in Delhi, which begin on October 3rd, has been a reminder that India does some things very badly.

Instability is another huge worry. About 200 of India's 588 districts are affected by a Maoist insurgency called the Naxalite movement. The rebels hide in India's great forests, which are also where much of the country's mineral wealth is buried. So mining and logging firms are seriously affected. Some of these also provoke violence, by evicting the poor to make way for their operations.

The home minister tried to assure investors in September that the insurgency would be quelled and that India was a safe place to park their money. He may be right about the second point: most businesses can avoid Naxalite-held areas. The biggest risk for banks in Mumbai and software firms in Bangalore is not that rebels will burst through their front doors but that a government sensitive to the anger of the poor will take populist steps to assuage it.

Populism is already a big problem. Some politicians woo voters by demonising business. Tata Motors dropped a plan for a factory in West Bengal after Mamata Banerjee, an opposition MP who is now the national railways minister, whipped up a campaign against the compulsory acquisition of land. The government often handles such transactions badly, so locals' fears were not absurd. But the area missed out on much-needed jobs. Ms Banerjee is expected to lead her party to victory in the next state elections.

Rahul Gandhi, a possible future prime minister, plays populist chords when it suits him. Construction of a new road between Delhi and the Taj Mahal has been delayed because some of the farmers whose land is to be paved over demanded as much compensation per square metre as landowners in the pricey Delhi suburbs. After a mob of farmers killed and gouged out the eyes of a policeman, Mr Gandhi rushed to the area and expressed sympathy—for the farmers.

Corruption is another concern. India's technocratic prime minister, Manmohan Singh, is widely admired, but some of his colleagues are crooks, thugs, rabble-rousers or all three. Corruption is debilitating. Many businesspeople think it is getting worse. In the old days ministers asked for bribes. Now they demand shares in firms to which they are about to award contracts, Indian bosses complain. Pratyush Sinha, who retired as head of India's anti-corruption watchdog in September, reckons 30% of his compatriots are "utterly corrupt".

That is uncharitable. Firms in sectors that do not depend on the government—software, cars, soap powder and so on—are mostly clean and professional, insists another senior official. The "messy stuff" mainly occurs in transactions that involve land, public contracts or natural resources. Yet the rot in these areas is so bad that it threatens to undermine the moral legitimacy of capitalism itself, frets this official.

India also faces challenges from abroad. Its success has inspired both a backlash and copycats. The governor of Ohio recently made headlines in India by banning state agencies from offshoring any of their work. Some American firms are shifting their call centres to the Philippines, where workers are as cheap as Indians but culturally closer to America.

The potholed road to prosperity

The Indian government will tackle the country's infrastructure problems more slowly and ineptly than it should. But it will tackle them. It planned to spend $500 billion between 2007 and 2012. That pace will accelerate, not least because the state is getting better at inducing private investors to stump up some of the capital.

The skills shortage, too, is being addressed. Even illiterate parents now see the value of education. Rather than pulling their children out of school to work in the fields, they are increasingly urging them to study, in the hope of landing a job in a call centre. Where public schools are no good, cheap private ones have sprung up. Remarkably, in rural areas more than 20% of Indian students, most of them poor, attend private schools. The literacy rate is rising fast. Among 15-24-year-olds, it is over 80%, though girls do worse than boys.

Busy present, exciting future

Several reforms that will benefit business are inching towards enactment. A proposed national sales tax would replace the confusing patchwork of state and local levies. A proposed land law would simplify and speed up sales of land for infrastructure, factories and so forth. And maybe one day Wal-Mart will be allowed to open retail stores in India.

Some investors complain that India's sprawling democracy is unpredictable. Understanding the relationship between the central government and the states is hard enough. Working out what fractious parties, pressure groups and powerbrokers are up to is virtually impossible.

Even when the government has made a decision, it is subject to challenge in court or by public opinion. Sometimes it is hard to tell who is in charge. "Don't tell the Indians I said this, but I'm more comfortable in China than India," says a prominent Western banker. "It's much easier to deal with the well-understood 'org chart' of China Inc than the freewheeling chaos of India."

Both China and India have taken off since their governments allowed people and companies more economic freedom. China went first, so it has a big head start. But as Morgan Stanley's economists point out, India's growth since the reforms of the early 1990s bears a striking resemblance to China's since its grand opening in the late 1970s (see chart 4).

And India's democracy may confer long-term benefits. It is not just that Indians can say what they please without having tanks rolled over them. It is also that India can change governments without a revolution. In the long run, that may offer a better guarantee of the stability that businesses crave.

Briefings2

http://www.economist.com/node/17145035

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[tech4all] The sad truth about Silicon Valley

2010-09-26T17:39:00.000-07:00

Panoramic Images-Getty Images

The people who run Facebook, the social-networking company, are furious about a new movie that takes lots of liberties in its depiction of how Facebook came into existence. They're upset because much of The Social Network, which opens Oct. 1, is just completely made up. That's fair enough. But to me, the really interesting thing about this movie is that while much of the tale is invented, the story tells a larger truth about Silicon Valley's get-rich-quick culture and the kind of people—like Facebook's 26-year-old founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg—who thrive in this environment.

The Valley used to be a place run by scientists and engineers, people like Robert Noyce, the Ph.D. physicist who helped invent the integrated circuit and cofounded Intel. The Valley, in those days, was focused on hard science and making things. At first there were semiconductors, which is how Silicon Valley got its name; then came computers and software. But now the Valley has become a casino, a place where smart kids arrive hoping to make an easy fortune building companies that seem, if not pointless, at least not as serious as, say, old-guard companies like HP, Intel, Cisco, and Apple.

The three hottest tech companies today are Facebook, Twitter, and Zynga. What, exactly, do they do? Facebook lets you keep in touch with your friends; for this profound service to mankind it will generate about $1.5 billion in revenue this year by bombarding its 500 million members with ads. Twitter is a noisy circus of spats and celebrity watching, and its hapless founders still can't figure out how to make money. That hasn't stopped venture capitalists from funding dozens of companies that make little apps that work with Twitter, just as they're also funding countless companies that make apps for Apple's iPhone, and just as, a few years ago, they were all funding companies that made applications to run on Facebook. Zynga, the biggest of those Facebook app-makers, reportedly will rake in $500 million this year by getting people addicted to cheesy games like Farmville and Mafia Wars, then selling "virtual goods" to use inside the games.

Meanwhile, among some longtime techies, there's a sense that something important has been lost.

"The old Silicon Valley was about solving really hard problems, making technical bets. But there's no real technical bet being made with Facebook or Zynga," says Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer at Microsoft who now runs an invention lab in Seattle. "Today almost everyone in the Valley will tell you there is too much 'me-tooism,' too much looking for a gold rush and not enough people who are looking to solve really hard problems."

His company, Intellectual Ventures, intentionally runs counter to the prevailing trend in Silicon Valley. The only problems it tries to solve are ones that seem overwhelmingly difficult. These include creating a new kind of nuclear reactor and developing technologies that could address climate change and eradicate malaria.

Myhrvold doesn't have problems raising money. He made a fortune at Microsoft and is a close friend of Bill Gates. But he worries about "the unknown engineers and professors who have good ideas. Are those people going to get funded or will they be talked out of it and told they should do something like Zynga, because virtual goods is where it's at these days?"

The risk is that by focusing an entire generation of bright young entrepreneurs on such silly things, we'll fall behind in creating the fundamental building blocks of our economy. The transistor and the integrated circuit gave rise to the last half century of prosperity. But what comes next? "If we distract people with the lure of easy money, with making companies that don't solve anything hard, we're going to wind up derailing the thing that has been driving our economy," Myhrvold says.

We've already fallen behind in areas like alternative energy, better batteries, and nanotechnology. Instead of racing to catch up, we're buying seeds and garden gnomes on Facebook. This won't end well.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/24/the-sad-truth-about-the-facebook-movie.html?from=rss#

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[tech4all] UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

2010-09-26T17:36:00.000-07:00

UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

September 26, 2010 10:19AM

THE United Nations was set today to appoint an obscure Malaysian astrophysicist to act as Earth's first contact for any aliens that may come visiting.

Mazlan Othman, the head of the UN's little-known Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa), is to describe her potential new role next week at a scientific conference at the Royal Society's Kavli conference centre in Buckinghamshire.

She is scheduled to tell delegates that the recent discovery of hundreds of planets around other stars has made the detection of extraterrestrial life more likely than ever before - and that means the UN must be ready to coordinate humanity's response to any "first contact".

During a talk Othman gave recently to fellow scientists, she said: "The continued search for extraterrestrial communication, by several entities, sustains the hope that some day humankind will receive signals from extraterrestrials.

"When we do, we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject. The UN is a ready-made mechanism for such coordination."

Professor Richard Crowther, an expert in space law and governance at the UK Space Agency and who leads British delegations to the UN on such matters, said: "Othman is absolutely the nearest thing we have to a 'take me to your leader' person."

However, he thinks humanity's first encounter with any intelligent aliens is more likely to be via radio or light signals from a distant planet than by beings arriving on Earth. And, he suggests, even if we do encounter aliens in the flesh, they are more likely to be microbes than anything intelligent.

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[tech4all] GATE 2011 - apply online

2010-09-20T23:40:00.000-07:00

http://www.gate.iitb.ac.in/gate2011/index.php

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[tech4all] Refresh ur mind - Indian book - that sold 28 lakh copies

2010-09-20T22:19:00.000-07:00

Download it from
http://hemalathamemorialtrust.com/download.php

...Tamil -
http://hemalathamemorialtrust.com/pdfs/Sinthipom,%20Sinthika%20Vaippom.pdf
English - http://hemalathamemorialtrust.com/pdfs/Let%20us%20think.pdf

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[tech4all] Mavenz Kenlighten - a social knowledge network for teachers, educators etc.

2010-09-19T22:15:00.000-07:00

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[tech4all] Let us think : free book - real true story

2010-09-16T03:58:00.000-07:00

Hi,

I came to read a book from http://hemalathamemorialtrust.com/index.html
(available in hindi, english, telugu,tamil)

http://hemalathamemorialtrust.com/download.php

It inspired me a lot.

Hemalatha Memorial Trust was started in the year 1996 in memory of B.Hemalatha
who passed away on 19.12.1995 at the age of 23. She grew up with a native desire
for service to the poor and she left this money-minded corrupt world after
undergoing many cheatings, and ended her life in the year 1995.

this book was written by Hemalatha's father is J.P.Balasubramaniam.

a must read by everyone.

Regards,
Surendiran.B

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[tech4all] Innovative Desalination plant opens in Chennai

2010-07-31T01:10:00.000-07:00

30 July 2010

Innovative India water plant opens in Madras

By Swaminathan Natarajan BBC Tamil

The plant could provide a template for solving India's water problems

A desalination plant which begins operating in Madras on Saturday will provide some of the cheapest drinking water in India, backers say.

They say that the plant will supply 1,000 litres of drinking water for just over $1 and could well be a "template" for other coastal Indian cities.

The company behind the plant says that it is the biggest in South Asia.

It will provide 100 million litres of water a day to the city by filtering sea water under high pressure.

In comparison, the government-run water board supplies about 650 million litres of water to the city's seven million residents.

Competitively priced

"We are using the advanced reverse osmosis technology. We are purifying the water by filtering it under high pressure. Unlike other desalination plants we are not boiling the water and as a result we are saving a lot of energy," Natarajan Ganesan, Joint General Manager of the Chennai Water Desalination company told the BBC.

India's monsoon is notoriously erratic

Mr Ganesan said that because the plant used "energy recovering technology", electricity consumption was reduced - making water produced there arguably the most competitively priced in India.

"It can be competitive even when compared to supplying water from natural sources like lakes. One has to spend lot of money on transport water from lakes," he said.

The plant will process 237 million litres of sea water per day.

An initial treatment will remove solids present in the water, before it is passed through a membrane under high pressure.

The plant - which cost $140m - is the joint venture between an Indian company IVRCL and Befessa of Spain. It is built under the "deboot" system - design, build, own, operate and transfer.

The government-run Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (CMWSSB) will buy the purified water for the next 25 years.

"We have agreed to buy the water from them at 48.66 rupees for 1,000 litres - meaning that it costs us just over one dollar for 1,000 litres," CMWSSB Managing Director Shiv Das Meena said.

"The water is purified and demineralised. This takes away salt, lime and other particles. The purified water meets the government standards. It tastes just like ordinary water and above all it is cheap," he said.

Chennai has been suffering from a chronic water shortage for decades. Its water needs are primarily met by lakes situated around the city. But these lakes depend on the erratic north-east monsoon.

On an average year, the monsoon brings about 100cm (39in) of rainfall, but most of this arrives over a short period - resulting in a massive run-off into the sea.

Another desalination plant with similar capability is expected to be commissioned by 2012.

Src: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10819040

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[tech4all] Cure for Diabetes Approaches Reality

2010-07-29T04:27:00.000-07:00

Cure for Diabetes Approaches Reality

By Teresa Shipley | Wed Jun 30, 2010 12:32 PM ET

In the medical world, pigs have provided a host of opportunities for humans, from heart transplant material to cancer therapies.

Now pigs have come to the rescue once again -- this time for diabetes.

Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis say they've managed to eliminate the disease in rats using transplanted pig cells -- and here's the kicker -- without the need for anti-rejection drugs.

The results appear in the American Journal of Pathology.

In a sort of one-two punch, researchers injected embryonic pancreatic pig cells into rats. The cells grow to become the pancreas, the organ responsible for producing insulin and regulating blood sugar. Several weeks later, the scientists injected a second dose of cells, this time from adult pigs.

The rats' bodies accepted the transplant and began producing enough insulin to regulate their systems, all without the need for anti-rejection drugs.

"While human islet transplants have cured diabetes in some people, there are so few donors that only a small percentage of patients get transplants," senior author Marc Hammerman MD, the Chromalloy Professor of Renal Diseases in Medicine, told ScienceDaily.

"Moreover, those who receive human islet transplants must take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives, so essentially they are trading daily insulin shots for immune-suppression drugs, which carry their own risks. Our research paves the way for a new approach to treating diabetes, one that features a virtually unlimited supply of islets and no need for immune suppression," he said.

Hammerman and his colleagues are now beginning experimentation using the same methods on non-human primates. If that works, he says he hopes to introduce the therapy to humans.

http://news.discovery.com/human/cure-for-diabetes-approaches-reality.html?print=true

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[tech4all] Time is running out - literally, says scientist

2010-07-29T00:44:00.000-07:00

Time is running out - literally, says scientist

By Tom Chivers and Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Published: 7:56AM GMT 18 Dec 2007

Scientists have come up with the radical suggestion that the universe's end may come not with a bang but a standstill - that time could be literally running out and could, one day, stop altogether.

The idea that time itself could cease to be in billions of years - and everything will grind to a halt - has been set out by Professor José Senovilla, Marc Mars and Raül Vera of the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, and University of Salamanca, Spain.

The motivation for this radical end to time itself is to provide an alternative explanation for "dark energy" - the mysterious antigravitational force that has been suggested to explain a cosmic phenomenon that has baffled scientists.

A decade ago, astronomers noticed that distant supernovae - exploding stars on the very fringes of the universe - seemed to be moving faster than those nearer to the centre, suggesting that they were accelerating as they shot through space.

Dark energy was suggested as a possible means of powering this acceleration of the expansion of the cosmos.

The problem is that no-one has any idea what dark energy is or where it comes from, and theoreticians around the world have been scrambling to find out what it is, or get rid of it.

The team's proposal, which will be published in the journal Physical Review D, does away altogether with dark energy. Instead, Prof Senovilla says, the appearance of acceleration is caused by time itself gradually slowing down, like a clock that needs winding.

"We do not say that the expansion of the universe itself is an illusion," he explains. "What we say it may be an illusion is the acceleration of this expansion - that is, the possibility that the expansion is, and has been, increasing its rate."

Instead, if time gradually slows "but we naively kept using our equations to derive the changes of the expansion with respect of 'a standard flow of time', then the simple models that we have constructed in our paper show that an "effective accelerated rate of the expansion" takes place."

While the change would be infinitesimally slow from an ordinary human perspective, from the grand perspective of cosmology - in which scientists study ancient light from suns that shone billions of years ago - this temporal slowing could be easily measured.

Astronomers are able to discern the expansion speed of the universe using the so-called "red shift" technique.

The principle is the same as that of an ambulance siren which gets higher as it comes towards the listener but lower as it moves away. Similarly, a star moving away appears redder in colour than one moving towards us.

Scientists look for exploding stars - supernovae - of certain types that provide a benchmark to work against.

However, the accuracy of these measurements depend on time remaining invariable throughout the universe.

If time is indeed slowing down, so that according to this new suggestion our solitary time dimension is slowly turning into a new space dimension, then the far-distant, ancient stars seen by cosmologists would therefore, from our perspective, look as though they were accelerating.

"Our calculations show that we would think that the expansion of the universe is accelerating," says Prof Senovilla.

The group bases its idea on one particular variant of superstring theory, a so called theory of everything, in which our universe is confined to the surface of a membrane, or brane, floating in a higher-dimensional space, known as the "bulk".

In some number of billions of years, time would cease to be time altogether - and everything will stop.

"Then everything will be frozen, like a snapshot of one instant, forever," Prof Senovilla tells New Scientist magazine. "Our planet will be long gone by then."

However, he adds that the team is only assuming there is one dimension of time. Itzhak Bars of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles has put forward the bizarre suggestion that there are two dimensions of time, not the one that we are all familiar with.

Prof Senovilla says: "One thing that is definitely not included in our models is the possibility of having more than one time dimension."

While the theory is outlandish, it is not without support. Prof Gary Gibbons, a cosmologist at Cambridge University, believes the idea has merit. "We believe that time emerged during the Big Bang, and if time can emerge, it can also disappear - that's just the reverse effect," he says.

"The wonderful thing about these explanations is that, strange as they sound, the Large Hadron Collider could provide evidence for extra dimensions in the universe," comments Dr Brian Cox of Manchester University, referring to the atom smasher in Geneva that will start up next year.

"If that happens, then these kind of theories will move out of the realm of speculation and into the mainstream."

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/large-hadron-collider/3319218/Time-is-running-out-literally-says-scientist.html

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[tech4all] Rain water harvesting

2010-07-15T08:21:00.000-07:00

A. Types, area and location of catchment


Sloping and flat roofs

Different types of catchments are to be marked on the site plan. The collection efficiency of a particular catchment will be determined by the fact whether the catchment will be paved, unpaved or roof.

Area of the catchments

The amount of rainfall that will be collected will depend directly on the area of the catchment-the larger the area, the more the water. The area from where water would be collected will be arrived at by multiplying the length by the breadth of this space under the roof.

Location of the catchments


Paved areas (driveways/roads)

The quality of water that will be collected from the catchment will depend on the location of the catchment. Roof catchment provides the best quality of water. In areas where the catchments are open to contamination or are chemically treated then the water must be treated before being used for any purpose. Care must be taken when harvesting water from industrial areas.


Unpaved areas (lawns/ playgrounds)

Type of catchments	Possible contamination
Industrial areas	Toxic materials such as oil, grease, heavy metals
Roads, highways, parking areas	Oil, grease, dust
Agricultural areas, lawns, gardens	Pesticides, fertilisers, silt

B. Rainfall

Click here for rainfall data for major cities of India

There are four types of rainfall information that you need:

The annual average rainfall: Will give an overall picture of the total amount of water that can be collected.
The pattern of rainfall over different months: Will tell you when the rainfall is available – is it available most of the year or only during a certain part of the year.
Number of rainy days: Will give an indication to decide whether to store the rainwater or to recharge it. If most of the rainfall comes only in a short span of time, then it is better to recharge the aquifer.
The peak rainfall intensity: Will give an indication to design the size of the storage or recharge structure. The sizing will be based on how much water will need to be stored or recharged during the most intense spell of rain.

C. Geological and hydrogeological data
For systems where the harvested rainwater will be used to recharge the aquifer, selection of site is important. Information must be collected on the following

Parameter	Type	Description
Soil	Poor or well sorted sand or gravel, fine sand, silt, loam, layered or unweathered clay	Sand, sandy loam and loamy sand soils have high infiltration rates. Silty loam or loam has moderate infiltration rates and clayey soils or consolidated rocks have low infiltration rates.
Rocks	Fractured or massive rocks, sandstone, limestone	Hard massive rocks are conducive to recharge
Aquifer	Confined or unconfined, perched, thickness of aquifer	The aquifer should be unconfined and must have good hydraulic conductivity as well as transmissivity so that the water that is recharged is quickly spread horizontally to prevent a water mound forming below the surface.
Depth of water table	Shallow or deep water table zones	The aquifer must not be at shallow depths and should be at least 8-10 metres below the ground level.

D. Water demand

Activity	Litres
Taking a bath from a bucket ( 1-2 buckets)	15-30
Shower (not power shower) for 15 minutes	60-80
Brushing teeth with the tap running	6
Brushing Teeth with the tap off	1
Washing utensils	30
Mopping	10
Drinking & cooking	6-10
Flushing toilet for one use (normal)	12-15
Flushingtoilet (low water use)	6
Washing Machine	100-150
Washing clothes without machine	30-45
Car Washing using a bucket	8
Car washing using a hosepipe	500
Gardening (2-4 buckets)depending on size may be more	30-60
Compiled from various sources

The size of the water harvesting structure is determined by two factors – how much is needed and how much is available.

Quantity of water currently used: This will give the total water demand and an indication of what portion of this total water need can be met from rainwater harvesting.
Per capita water demand: In case you cannot find out the exact amount of water used, you can find out the number of persons and multiply this with the per capita norm for water supply to arrive at the total water demand.
Water demand during the driest period: This is to help you estimate the most essential quantum of water needed during the driest period so that plans can be made for rainwater harvesting to meet this minimum need.

E. Legislation and incentives
Today many state governments and city municipalities have passed laws that make it mandatory for existing or new buildings to have rainwater harvesting systems. At the same time, there are also many incentives to motivate people to take up rainwater harvesting. You must find out about what incentives are available in your city. To find out what some states and cities have done, click here

Once all the relevant information has been collected, the next step is to study the site plan:

From the site plan find out the space available for water harvesting structures. This will determine the size and location of the structures.
Note the number and location of existing rain water pipes, outlets/spouts.
Find out if there are any defunct or existing borewells, swimming pool, water storage tanks that can be used for storing the harvested water. In a colony delineate all the open spaces from where water can be harvested as well as stored.
Determine the natural drainage, slope and location of storm water drains. This will help to lay out the conveyance pipes along the natural drainage patterns. This is particularly important while planning for a large complex or colony.
Mark the location of plumbing (water and sewage) and electrical lines in the site. Care must be taken to avoid plumbing and electrical lines while constructing the water harvesting structures. In case of project in public places this becomes even more important that underground sewer, water supply and other such cables and lines are not inadvertently destroyed.
Other information such as the existence and location of generator room, compost pit, waste dump etc also need to be taken into account.
The water harvesting structures should be as close as possible to the source and use of water.

Total volume of water = Area x runoff coefficient x rainfall

There is some loss of water due to evaporation or absorption by catchment surfaces and other kinds of losses. The runoff coefficent of a catchment gives you the proportion of the rainwater that can be harvested from the total rainfall.

Storage, recharge or both: The decision about whether to make storage or recharge structures depends on a number of factors as explained in table below:

Parameter	Type/condition	Recommended structure
Nature of aquifer	Impermeable, non-porous, non-homogeneous, hard rock area	Storage
Depth of groundwater table	More than 8 metres	Recharge and storage
Nature of terrain	Hilly, rocky or undulating	Storage
	Uniform or flat, alluvial and sedimentary	Recharge and storage
Nature of soil	Alluvial, sandy, loamy soils, gravel, silty, with boulders or small stones (kankar)	Recharge and storage
	Clayey soil	Storage
Nature of geological formation	Massive rocks (such as the Deccan trap)	Storage
	Fractured, faulted or folded rocks, or comprises of weathered, jointed or fissured rocks	Recharge and storage
Nature of rainfall and monsoon	Number of rainy days are more, bimodal monsoon, not intensive, uniformly distributed	Storage
	Unimodal monsoon, rainfall available only for a few months	Recharge and storage

Number of structures: The number of tanks will depend on the site conditions, which includes the position and location of the down pipes, the layout of the building, the size of the storage tank, the slope of the roof, the budget and the space available.

Capacity of storage tanks: Those will depend on the type of monsoon, bi-modal or uni-modal, number of rainy days, total demand and the rainfall intensity. If the rainy days are more, a smaller tank is sufficient as the tank can get frequently filled. The size will also depend on the demand and the total rainfall. Where the rainfall intensity is greater, the size will increase.

Location of structures: The location of structures will depend on the layout, the slope, the presence of other services and pipes and proximity to point of use.

Filtration and treatment: The type of filtration method used will depend on the use of the rainwater. If the harvested rainwater is going to be used for toilet or irrigation, then minimal filtration (with sand, gravel) is required to ensure that the water does not contain solid and toxic contaminants. On the other hand, when the water is to be used for drinking, then the level of treatment or filtration should be of high level.

The budget available for rainwater harvesting is one of the most important determinants of the type, size and number of water harvesting structures. In large projects, where there is a possibility of budgetary constraints it is better to design the project in phases. For more information on costs, click here

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