Vijay Barve

Don't be serious, be sincere.

2010-01-13T08:57:00.000-08:00

Don’t just have career or academic goals. Set goals to give you a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful. Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace are all in good order.

There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup. There is no fun in driving a car if your back hurts. Shopping is not enjoyable if your mind is full of tensions.

"Life is one of those races in nursery school where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point coming first. Same is with life where health and relationships are the marble.

Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling of being excited and alive, will start to die.

One thing about nurturing the spark - don't take life seriously. Life is
not meant to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity.

If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up?

It's ok, bunk a few classes, scoring low in couple of papers, goof up a few interviews, take leave from work, fall in love, little fights with your spouse. We are people, not programmed devices........."

"Don't be serious, be sincere."!!

Speech by Chetan Bhagat at Symbiosis from a forwarded email.

सलाम कृष्णाला !

2009-05-31T14:38:00.000-07:00

महिनाभर "आयपीएल'' स्पर्धा गाजत होती. चांगला खेळ, चांगले खेळाडू बघायला मिळाले. खूप छान मनोरंजन झाले. पण त्याचबरोबर अमाप पैसा कसा खर्च होतो किंवा त्याची उलाढाल कशी होते, ते पाहायला मिळाले. इतका पैसा उतू गेला की परदेशातील शाळांना प्रत्येक मॅचमध्ये देणग्या देण्यात आल्या !

भारतात गेल्या वर्षीच्या "आयपीएल' मध्ये असे काही झालेले आठवत तरी नाही. असो, उद्योजक, कलाकार सगळे त्यात समरस झाले होते. आणि इथे मात्र पुण्यासारख्या शहरात कृष्णा पाटील नावाची धाडसी गिर्यारोहक एव्हरेस्ट हे जगातील अत्युच्च शिखर पार करण्याचे स्वप्न उराशी बाळगून, ते पूर्णत्वाला नेण्यासाठी काही लाख रुपयांच्या मदतीसाठी वणवण भटकत होती.

राजकीय नेत्यांनी निवडणुकीचे कारण सोयीस्करपणे पुढे करून आपला नाईलाज दर्शविला, कलाकारांना त्यात काही रस वाटला नाही, उद्योजकांपर्यंत पोच नव्हती. शेवटी आपल्या मुलीचे स्वप्न पूर्ण करायचेच या ध्येयाने कृष्णाच्या वडिलांनी सारस्वत बॅंकेकडून कर्ज घेतले आणि तिला या मोहिमेवर धाडले. २१ मे २००९ रोजी या धाडसी कर्तबगार मुलीने हे शिखर सर केले. देशातील दुसरी तरुण गिर्यारोहक मुलीचा मान तिने आपल्या शिरपेचात रोवला. पेपरात ही बातमी वाचताना मान अभिमानाने ताठ झाली, ऊर भरून आले. तिचा खडतर प्रवास वाचून खरंच या १९ वर्षीय युवतीचे कौतुक करावे तेवढे थोडेच !

एव्हरेस्टसारखे शिखर पार करण्याची मोहीम म्हणजे काही सोपी नाही. किती तयारी आणि परिश्रम घेतले असतील तिने. मी एनसीसीत असताना अगदी छोटे ट्रेक्‍स करायची. म्हणजे कृष्णाने केले त्यातले एक पाऊलच असेल माझे जेमतेम, पण तेवढे छोटे ट्रेक्‍स करतानासुद्धा आम्ही किती सराव, मेहनत घ्यायचो. रोज व्यायाम, क्रॉस कंट्री, चांगले डाएट यामुळे स्टॅमिना वाढवायचा. मग चढ- उताराची प्रॅक्‍टिस. सगळ्यात महत्त्वाचे म्हणजे शिस्त स्वतःची, मोहिमेतील व बरोबरच्या सर्व ग्रुपची. त्यातच अर्धे यश मिळते, नंतर आहे तो कंट्रोल.

मनावर, सवयींवर, वागण्यावर, भावनांवर या समस्यांवर कंट्रोल ठेवायची सवय लावावी लागते. म्हणूनच गिर्यारोहक शारीरिकदृष्ट्या तर फिट असतोच, पण मानसिक तयारीही तितकीच महत्त्वाची. ऐनवेळी येणाऱ्या अडचणींवर कशी मात करायची याचे प्रशक्षण फार महत्त्वाचे. कृष्णाच्या मोहिमेत तर दोन ऍव्हलान्चचे अडथळे आले. सुदैवाने ती त्यातून सुखरूप वाचली, पण त्यांच्या ग्रुपमधील एक शेर्पा दगावला. आपल्या ग्रुपमधील कोणी असे जाणे म्हणजे एवढा मोठा मानसिक आघात असतो की पुढील प्रवास करण्याची जिगरच संपते.

आमच्या कुलू मनालीच्या एनसीसीच्या ट्रेकमध्ये रिव्हर क्रॉसिंग करताना असा एक कॅडेट वाहून गेला होता व नंतर त्याचे प्रेत मिळालेच नाही. केवळ त्याच्या हलगर्जीपणामुळे व शिस्त मोडल्यामुळे हा प्रकार घडला, पण बाकी ग्रुपवर एवढे दडपण आले की ते अजूनही आठवले तरी अंगावर शहारा येतो. पण कृष्णाने तिच्या मनाची तयारी केली होती हे अगदी दाखवून दिले. तिने सांगितले, "मी जेव्हा पीकवर पोहचले तेव्हाचा आनंद अवर्णनीय होता, पण तरीही मी मनाला पटवले, आताशी नुसते पीकवर पोहचलो आहोत, पण यानंतर उतार पूर्ण करून परत खाली पोहचायचे आहे. तेव्हाच मोहीम संपेल व तेव्हाच यशाचा आनंद मिळेल.'' खरंच किती परिपक्व विचार आहेत, शिवाय स्वतःच्या भावनांवर असा कंट्रोल ठेवून ध्येय गाठणे म्हणजे अपूर्वच.

तिचे प्रयत्न, मेहनत तर आहेच, पण तिच्या घरच्यांचा पाठिंबाही तिच्यासाठी महत्त्वाचा. त्यांच्या मोटिव्हेशन व सपोर्टमुळे ती हे स्वप्न पूर्ण करू शकली. तिच्या वडिलांनी मदतीचा हात पुढे आला नाही म्हणून न हरता, कर्ज काढून तिला एव्हरेस्टवर धाडले. शिवाय सारस्वत बॅंकेनेही ते कर्ज मंजूर केले, एवढेच नाही तर तिच्या यशामुळे, आनंदाने ते कर्ज माफही झाले ! खरंच कौतुकास्पद आहे. या मोहिमेत ज्या ज्या लोकांचा सहभाग होता, सहकार्य होते त्या सगळ्यांचा आम्हाला अभिमान आहे.

कृष्णा तुला असेच यश मिळो व एव्हरेस्टसारखीच तू जगातील सर्व शिखरे सर कर. एक मराठी मुलगी म्हणून आम्हाला तुझा अभिमान आहेच, पण आपल्या भारताचा तिरंगा अत्युच्च शिखरावर रोवून आलीस म्हणून तुला आम्हा सगळ्यांचा सलाम!

- अंजली भागवत

Article on eSakal

Pizza

2009-03-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

Right from childhood I have liking for Baked products. Bisuits, Bread, Cakes .... As I was introduced to Pizza, I started liking it too.

I enjoy Pizza of famous chains like Domino's Pizza, Pizza Hut etc. But I also used to enjoy Pizza made at home in Bangalore. We used to make it with ready made Pizza base in stove top pans. It is fun to try out own recipes for the pizza.

But now that I have a Oven, I thought of making a Pizza from scratch (Starting from Floor). A friend of mine suggested a recipe. And few other friends also give some practical useful tips. But the recipe is good enough if you want to try making one yourself. And of course toppings is your imagination and creativity.

The Pizza was Yummy !

The Crisis of Credit Visualized

2009-02-22T14:07:00.000-08:00

Found this simple and interesting short visualization on Credit Crisis.

Bespin : Another promissing tool from Mozilla Labs

2009-02-16T15:27:00.000-08:00

I hope you have already read or heard about Bespin. It is an web based code editor which can be used for "cloud computing" or just collaborating projects.

It boasts of the following features:

Ease of Use
Real-time Collaboration
Integrated Command-Line
Extensible and Self-Hosted
Fast
Accessible from Anywhere

Here is the screen shot of Bespin editing a HTML file.

Bespin has an interesting Dashboard to manage files and projects.

Visit Bespin project page for more details.

National Knowledge Commission : Call for a contest

2009-02-11T19:36:00.000-08:00

The recommendations of National Knowledge Commission have been crafted to achieve the objective of tapping into India's enormous reservoir of knowledge, mobilising national talent and creating an empowered generation with access to tremendous possibilities for the 550 million youth.
To accelerate the process of reform and to create a groundswell of public opinion, NKC invites everyone to

JOIN THE MOVEMENT
Participate in the online contests comprising debates, films and essays.

Chepest Laptop (Under $10)

2009-02-03T14:59:00.000-08:00

The 'world's cheapest laptop', developed in India, was unveiled by Union Minister for Human Resources Development Arjun Singh at the Tirupati temple on Tuesday evening.

The laptop, jointly developed by several organisations, such as the University Grants Commission, the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, will be priced at around $10 to $20 (about Rs 500 to Rs 1,000), officials said.

S K Sinha, joint secretary in the ministry for education, giving a demonstration of the device which is smaller than the normal laptop, said that it will need some more fine-tuning. He said the laptop is expected to reach the market in about six months.

Arjun Singh had an interaction with the vice chancellors of the remote states like Jammu and Kashmir and Manipur to prove the point that the device will be able to bring about high quality networking among the various institutions of higher education and also increase the skills of e learning of the students in rural areas.

The project has already created a buzz in the laptop industry across the world.

The laptop has 2 GB onboard memory with wireless Internet connectivity. To make it useful for the students, especially in the rural areas, the scientists have made it low power consuming gadget.

The mission was launched at a huge gathering of academicians and the officials from across the country including thirty vice chancellors of central and state universities at the campus of Sri Venkateshwara University Tirupati.

Like the National Mission on Education through ICT, the laptop is also aimed at improving the skills of students, both at the school and higher levels. Under the mission the government also intends to provide high-speed Internet access to the schools to download e-books and e-journals and other material. Students will be able to download the material through the 'Sakshat' portal.

The goal of the national mission is to increase the enrollment in higher education in the country by 5 per cent over the next five years. The government will subsidise 25 per cent of broadband connectivity costs for private and public colleges.

The $10 laptop is being seen as India's reply to One Laptop per Child's XO and Classmate of Intel. The XO, created by scientist Nicholas Negroponte and MIT Media Lab was originally targeted to cost only $100 but by the time it was ready to enter the market its cost went up to $188. The Classmate notebook PC from Intel was priced at $ 300 a piece.

In contrast, the Indian government's effort to market lap top at only $10 has caused a flutter in the international laptop market and many players are curious to know the details of the costing and how Indians managed to keep the cost so low.

Rediff News : India unveils $10 laptop!

And there were mixed reactions from all over the world.

More than 150 news articles already on google news

I am eagerly waiting to hear /see more about it.

Thinking Visually

2009-02-01T10:37:00.000-08:00

Thinking Visually

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: storytelling presentation)

Lingo Kid

2009-01-25T20:36:00.000-08:00

I came across this amazing video of a kid who know to speak 13 languages. He is from Mumbai and speaks several foreign languages to see Peacock Feather Fans. This boy has not done schooling but has learned the languages to survive in the competitive market of roadside sellers.

First Video shows him talking many languages

And the second one after a few years how he has matured.

Life is a amazing teacher isn't it ?

Rs. 500

2009-01-13T11:38:00.000-08:00

What is worth of Rs. 500 to you ? I was amazed by the options people have and the difference in the way people look at it.

Worth thinking over... Do leave your comments.

East African Savanna : Landscapes

2008-11-18T16:34:00.000-08:00

This is a collection of Landscapes in the African Savanna. Please feel free to click on the picture to see bigger images and set it as your wallpaper. I am not giving too many captions here.

Wildebeests and Zebras in the background.

Early morning bit of back light shot of Savanna animals mixed heard.

A Gazelle
Hanging nests of weaver birds.

Remains of 2004 famine

East African Savana : Butterflies and Plants

2008-11-09T20:14:00.000-08:00

Since I had very less free time to roam around, I managed to photograph only two Butterflies and I am yet to look for the identities of both.

The first one is this, probably a Lycaenidae

this another Pieridae looks like a Gull.

The Savanna walk was full of wild flowers. I did not have too much time to spend, but did manage to click few interesting ones.

This looks like Fabaceae

And this a Liliaceae

This a ground Orchid ?

Typical Savanna trees. Looks like some Acacia

Aloe seen in wild

I guess this is an Ipomea

This is Acacia species

This reminds me of Apta

A Solanaceae

This is a Cadaba species of Capparaceae. Reminded me of Cadaba fruticosa I seen back in Bangalore.

This one I am not remembering now.

This was an interesting herb, some ground orchid probably.

All the identities are listed here are wild guess of a non-botanist. Please let me know any hints on the identities here in comments or by email.

ISRO'S Bhuvan To Better Google Earth

2008-11-06T17:30:00.000-08:00

Rahul Srinivas, Nov 06, 2008 1637 hrs IST

Another 'Bhuvan' up against the Angrez

Now, this is a comparison we thought we never would make. Nevertheless, here it is. Come March 2009, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) will launch its own IRS (Indian Remote Sensing) image portal called Bhuvan. The portal will offer detailed satellite views of our planet to users -- akin to those seen on Google Earth and Wikimapia, but with a difference; this one will give sharper and more detailed pictures than provided by Google. Google Earth, which can zoom up to 200m, will have good competition in Bhuvan, which has a sharper zoom level capability of up to 10m.

Apart from the "geek" value of this service, ISRO plans to use it to enhance urban and forest planning and traffic management. Like Google Earth, a "special" version would be in the offing for professional and corporate users who might need higher resolution data. Of course, this would come at a price, though the base version would remain free.

Now, the differences. While Google Earth provides single-layer information, Bhuvan would provide multi-layer information. Additionally, you would be able to view the images date-wise. The entire service makes use of Indian satellites and its focus will be the Indian subcontinent.

Apart from Bhuvan, ISRO is also readying an information portal called "Bhu Sampada." Both services are expected to be operational by March 2009.

Story

East African Savana : Animals

2008-10-31T23:02:00.000-07:00

During the walk in the Savannas, I could spot few Animals too. But since I was on foot, and had less time, could not see most of them from near.

First mammals we spotted were Gazelles. The Thomson's gazelle (Eudorcas thomsoni). They were very far from us.

After moving forward, we saw Zebra's. I guess they were The Plains zebra (Equus quagga, formerly Equus burchelli). There were many of them and were slowly moving away as we approaced them.

On the horizon we could spot some Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) .

There was another type of Gazelles. I think they were The Grant's Gazelle (Nanger granti). It disappeared behind the trees.

There were a few wildebeest too, among a group of zebras at a distance, but could not approach them.

On the way back, from the vehicle, I could see the wildebeests from near and I think they were The Blue Wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus).

In a short time that I managed, I could see lot of things I feel.

East African Savanna : Birds

2008-10-28T16:42:00.000-07:00

In October 2008, I got an opportunity to spend some time in East African Savanna. I was in Kenya, about 50 miles away from Nairobi. The place was, couple of kilometers off “Trans African Highway” which connects Cairo in Egypt to Cape Town in South Africa.

I was there for 5 days, but busy with meeting and hardly got time to go out of compound. But on last day, finally I took opportunity to walk out and explore a bit.

During my stay, I saw few birds, I could not identify them all, but I thought I will share the pictures anyway, and request for help from you to help me identify them.

These sparrow like birds were commonly seen and were nesting on medium trees, like weavers. There call was resembling Indian Mynas. The White-browed Sparrow-weaver (Plocepasser mahali

There were colonies of Weaver Birds. I presume they are Speke's Weaver (Ploceus spekei). The males were busy building nests.

There were several trees having these nests.

One more bird, The Superb Starling (Lamprotornis superbus). Really very active bird.

And this looks like The Northern Pied-babbler (Turdoides hypoleuca) .

Thanks to Alka for Ids.

More bird pictures to come.

Internet use 'good for the brain'

2008-10-14T14:55:00.000-07:00

For middle aged and older people at least, using the internet helps boost brain power, research suggests.

A University of California Los Angeles team found searching the web stimulates centres in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning.

The researchers say this might even help to counter-act the age-related physiological changes that cause the brain to slow down.

The study features in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

Areas activated by reading a book in the brain of an experienced web user

As the brain ages, a number of changes occur, including shrinkage and reductions in cell activity, which can impact on performance.

It has long been thought that activities which keep the brain active, such as crossword puzzles, may help minimise the impact - and the latest study suggests that surfing the web can be added to the list.

Web use stimulates much more activity in the same brain

Lead researcher Professor Gary Small said: "The study results are encouraging, that emerging computerized technologies may have physiological effects and potential benefits for middle-aged and older adults.

"Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function."

The latest study was based on 24 volunteers aged between 55 and 76. Half were experienced internet users, the rest were not.

Compared with reading

Each volunteer underwent a brain scan while performing web searches and book-reading tasks.

Both types of task produced evidence of significant activity in regions of the brain controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities.

However, the web search task produced significant additional activity in separate areas of the brain which control decision-making and complex reasoning - but only in those who were experienced web users.

Brain activity in web newcomers: similar for reading and internet use

The researchers said that compared with simple reading, the internet's wealth of choices requires that people make decisions about what to click on in order to get the relevant information.

However, they suggested that newcomers to the web had not quite grasped the strategies needed to successfully carry out a web search.

Professor Smith said: "A simple, everyday task like searching the web appears to enhance brain circuitry in older adults, demonstrating that our brains are sensitive and can continue to learn as we grow older."

Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, said: "These fascinating findings add to previous research suggesting that middle-aged and older people can reduce their risk of dementia by taking part in regular mentally stimulating activities.

"Older web users - 'silver surfers' - are doing precisely this.

"Frequent social interactions, regular exercise and maintaining a balanced diet can also reduce dementia risk."

Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research at the Alzheimer's Society, said: "Use it or lose it may well be a positive message to keep people active but there is very little real evidence that keeping the brain exercised with puzzles, games or other activities can promote cognitive health and reduce the risk of dementia."

Story

Holographic television to become reality

2008-10-06T13:18:00.000-07:00

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Picture this: you're sat down for the Football World Cup final, or a long-awaited sequel to the "Sex and the City" movie and you're watching all the action unfold in 3-D on your coffee table.

The future of television? This image is an impression of what 3D holographic television may look like.

It sounds a lot like a wacky dream, but don't be surprised if within our lifetime you find yourself discarding your plasma and LCD sets in exchange for a holographic 3-D television that can put Cristiano Ronaldo in your living room or bring you face-to-face with life-sized versions of your gaming heroes.

The reason for renewed optimism in three-dimensional technology is a breakthrough in rewritable and erasable holographic systems made earlier this year by researchers at the University of Arizona.

Dr Nasser Peyghambarian, chair of photonics and lasers at the university's Optical Sciences department, told CNN that scientists have broken a barrier by making the first updatable three-dimensional displays with memory.

"This is a prerequisite for any type of moving holographic technology. The way it works presently is not suitable for 3-D images," he said.

The researchers produced displays that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes.

To create television sets the images would need to be changing multiple times each second -- but Peyghambarian is very optimistic this can happen.

He said the University of Arizona team, which is now ten-strong, has been working on advancing hologram technology since 1990 -- so this is a major step forward. He believes that much of the difficulty in creating a holographic set has now been overcome.

"It took us a while to make that first breakthrough, but as soon as you have the first element of it working the rest often comes more rapidly," he said. "What we are doing now is trying to make the model better. What we showed is just one color, what we are doing now is trying to use three colors. The original display was four inches by four inches and now we're going for something at least as big as a computer screen."

There are no more great barriers to overcome now, he said.

The breakthrough has made some long-time researchers of the technology believe that it could now come to fruition.

Tung H. Jeong, a retired physics professor at Lake Forest College outside Chicago who had studied holography since the 1960s told NJ.com; "When we start talking about erasable and rewritable holograms, we are moving toward the possibility of holographic TV ... It has now been shown that physically, it's possible."

And what might these holographic televisions look like?

According to Peyghambarian, they could be constructed as a screen on the wall (like flat panel displays) that shows 3-D images, with all the image writing lasers behind the wall; or it could be like a horizontal panel on a table with holographic writing apparatus underneath.

So, if this project is realized, you really could have a football match on your coffee table, or horror-movie villains jumping out of your wall.

Peyghambarian is also optimistic that the technology could reach the market within five to ten years. Peyghambarian is also optimistic that the technology could reach the market within five to ten years. He said progress towards a final product should be made much more quickly now that a rewriting method had been found.

However, it is fair to say not everyone is as positive about this prospect as Peyghambarian.

Justin Lawrence, a lecturer in Electronic Engineering at Bangor University in Wales, told CNN that small steps are being made on technology like 3-D holograms, but, he can't see it being ready for the market in the next ten years.

"It's one thing to demonstrate something in a lab but it's another thing to be able to produce it cheaply and efficiently enough to distribute it to the mass market," Lawrence said.

Yet, there are reasons to be optimistic that more resources will be channeled into developing this technology more quickly.

The Japanese Government is pushing huge financial and technical weight into the development of three-dimensional, virtual-reality television, and the country's Communications Ministry is aiming at having such technology available by 2020.

Peyghambarian said there are no major sponsors of the technology at present, but as the breakthroughs continued, he hopes that will change.

Even if no major electronics company commit themselves, there is hope that backers could come from outside of the consumer electronics industry, he said.

"It could have some other applications. In training it's useful to show people three-dimensional displays. Also it would be good to show things in 3-D for defense command and control and for surgery," he said.

Story

Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman

2008-10-06T13:03:00.000-07:00

Web-based programs like Google's Gmail will force people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that will cost more and more over time, according to the free software campaigner

Richard Stallman on cloud computing: "It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign." Photograph: www.stallman.org

The concept of using web-based programs like Google's Gmail is "worse than stupidity", according to a leading advocate of free software.

Cloud computing – where IT power is delivered over the internet as you need it, rather than drawn from a desktop computer – has gained currency in recent years. Large internet and technology companies including Google, Microsoft and Amazon are pushing forward their plans to deliver information and software over the net.

But Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the computer operating system GNU, said that cloud computing was simply a trap aimed at forcing more people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that would cost them more and more over time.

"It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign," he told The Guardian.

"Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true."

The 55-year-old New Yorker said that computer users should be keen to keep their information in their own hands, rather than hand it over to a third party.

His comments echo those made last week by Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, who criticised the rash of cloud computing announcements as "fashion-driven" and "complete gibberish".

"The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do," he said. "The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?"

The growing number of people storing information on internet-accessible servers rather than on their own machines, has become a core part of the rise of Web 2.0 applications. Millions of people now upload personal data such as emails, photographs and, increasingly, their work, to sites owned by companies such as Google.

Computer manufacturer Dell recently even tried to trademark the term "cloud computing", although its application was refused.

But there has been growing concern that mainstream adoption of cloud computing could present a mixture of privacy and ownership issues, with users potentially being locked out of their own files.

Stallman, who is a staunch privacy advocate, advised users to stay local and stick with their own computers.

"One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control," he said. "It's just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software."

Story

Beetles trouble Logging trade

2008-10-02T09:19:00.000-07:00

A mountain pine beetle infestation is sweeping across British Colombian forests hitting the Canadian logging trade. Mark Worthington reports.

Check story for video

World's rarest tree frog found

2008-09-11T08:51:00.000-07:00

An extremely rare female frog has been spotted for the first time in 20 years.

The tiny amphibian, Isthmohyla rivularis, is carrying eggs, suggesting that the species is doing well.

The discovery was filmed by the BBC in the Costa Rican jungle as part of a scientific expedition with a team from Manchester University and Chester Zoo as they work on conservation programmes for rare frogs.

Andrew Gray describes the find.

Additional footage courtesy of Alexander Villegas

Check story for video

'Extinct' frogs survive devastating fungus

2008-09-11T08:34:00.000-07:00

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- A tiny frog species thought by many experts to be extinct has been rediscovered alive and well in a remote area of Australia's tropical north, researchers said Thursday.

The Armoured Mistfrog had been seen since 1991 until it was found in Australia's tropical north.

The 40 millimeters-long (1.5 inch) Armoured Mistfrog had not been seen since 1991, and many experts assumed it had been wiped out by a devastating fungus that struck northern Queensland state.

But two months ago, a doctoral student at James Cook University in Townsville conducting research on another frog species in Queensland stumbled across what appeared to be several Armoured Mistfrogs in a creek, said professor Ross Alford, head of a research team on threatened frogs at the university.

Conrad Hoskin, a researcher at The Australian National University in Canberra who has been studying the evolutionary biology of north Queensland frogs for the past 10 years, conducted DNA tests on tissue samples from the frogs and determined they were the elusive Armoured Mistfrog.

Alford's group got the results on Wednesday. A spokeswoman for the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency also confirmed Hoskin's findings.

"A lot of us were starting to believe it had gone extinct, so to discover it now is amazing," Hoskin said. "It means some of the other species that are missing could potentially just be hidden away along some of the streams up there."

Craig Franklin, a zoology professor at The University of Queensland who studies frogs, said the Mistfrog's rediscovery was exciting.

"It's very significant," Franklin said. "We've lost so many frog species in Australia ... Hopefully it's a population that's making a comeback."

The light brown frogs, with dark brown spots, congregate in areas with fast-flowing water. So far, between 30 and 40 have been found.

The chytrid fungus was blamed for decimating frog populations worldwide, including seven species in Queensland's tropics between the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Armoured Mistfrogs had been classified as critically endangered rather than extinct, but most researchers believed they had died out from the disease, Alford said.

Most of the Armoured Mistfrogs that Alford's group has found are infected with the fungus, but the disease does not appear to be making them sick, he said.

Alford and his team plan to study the creatures to try and determine how they managed to coexist with the fungus, in a bid to aid future conservation and management of vulnerable frogs.

Story

Armstrong returning to cycling

2008-09-09T14:52:00.000-07:00

Lance Armstrong's return to win a seventh consecutive tour made him a nationwide hero.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Lance Armstrong is getting back on his bike, determined to win an eighth Tour de France.

Armstrong's return from cancer to win the Tour a record seven consecutive times made him a hero to cancer patients worldwide and elevated cycling to an unprecedented level in America.

The Tour "is the intention," Armstrong's spokesman Mark Higgins told The Associated Press, "but we've got some homework to do over there."

Added Bill Stapleton, Armstrong's lawyer and longtime confidant: "We're not going to try to win second place."

Complete Story

Urban Biodiversity in Copenhagen, Denmark : June 2008

2008-08-27T20:38:00.000-07:00

I had opportunity to visit Copenhagen in June 2008. June was a really good time to travel because the weather was really pleasant. I could walk a lot on the streets. To help me even more the days were really long, almost 20-21 hours.

I am trying to give a glimpse of whatever biodiversity I came across while I was there.

These Pigeons were happily moving on the ground feeding. I felt at home because this is very familiar site back in India too.

This Magpie was commonly seen scavenging on the trash cans. I found them commoner than the crows there.

The swans were present in the lakes. Some of them were very active in the afternoon.

And some of them were taking a nap.

The swans were bold and friendly and would let me go near to take photographs.

The gulls were feeding along with Swans.

And look at this Gull sitting on the statue.

And the familiar Coots were also seen.

The ducks were present, but were not looking as bright as we see them in India.

The crows were present, though in lesser number.

There another type of Pigeons which I need to identify yet.

I also saw a lot of sparrows, though I could not photograph any.

The were lot of flowers around. I could hardly photograph them, but took some snaps on the way, which are mostly planted garden flowers. Here are few of the photographs.

Web and Email Threats Continues to Rise in 2008

2008-08-14T08:38:00.000-07:00

By Megha Banduni Rai, Network Computing, August 05 2008, 1230 hrs

Websense Security Labs recently conducted research that says that 60 percent of the top 100 most popular Web sites either hosted malicious content or contained a masked redirect. The top 100 most popular Web sites, many of which are social networking, Web 2.0 and search sites, represent the majority of all Web page views and are the most popular target for attackers. With their large user base, good reputations and support for Web 2.0 applications, these sites provide malicious code authors with abundant opportunity.

Following the trend seen in 2007, attackers continued to take advantage of laws in traditional security measures and bypass reputation-based systems to increase attack effectiveness.

In the first half of 2008 more than 75 percent of the Web sites that Websense classified as malicious were actually sites with seemingly “good” reputations that had been compromised by attackers. This represents a 50 percent increase from the second half of 2007.

In addition to Web exploits, email spammers are also taking advantage of the reputation of popular email services like yahoo and Gmail to bypass antispam systems.

Dan Hubbard, chief technology officer, Websense says, “Today attackers are overwhelmingly forgoing creating their own malicious sites and targeting legitimate Web sites that have a built in base of visitors. There is an element of trust in the Web 2.0 world that the Web sites we frequent every day are safe, but attackers are taking advantage of the “good reputations” of Web sites to launch attacks.”

He further explains, “Most Web security and URL filtering technology today heavily rely on a Web sites’ reputation, but this method is outdated. To safely use the Internet today, organizations need Web security protection that can analyze the content on the Web page in real-time.”

Websense Security Labs found that 29 percent of malicious Web attacks included data-stealing code, demonstrating that attackers are after essential information and data. The convergence of blended Web and email threats continues to increase. Websense Security Labs reports that now more than 76.5 percent of all emails in circulation in the past six months contained links to spam sites and/or malicious Web sites. This represents an 18 percent increase since December 2007.

Websense researchers believes that organizations should prepare for continuing challenges in during the second half of 2008 and encourages security managers to shift their protection emphasis from guarding against inbound attacks at the infrastructure level to guarding essential information against blended threats and accidental or malicious loss, in tune with Web 2.0 and the internet as a business platform.

To ensure risk mitigation keeps in step with the threat climate, enterprises must rethink their approaches to Web, messaging, and data security. Organizations must think about data. How is it used? Who is using it? Where and when is it safe to use? Who can receive it? Which channels can safely send it?

Story

CherryPal

2008-08-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

Just read about this new computer

CherryPal™ is trying to change the world one computer at a time. We’ve created the most affordable, easiest to use and greenest desktop computer available.
The CherryPal desktop is a tiny PC designed with the user in mind. It does all the things you do every day: surf the web, keep in touch with your friends, listen to iTunes, watch videos, word processing, presentations and spreadsheets, all without the hassle of a traditional PC. It only uses 2 watts of power, lasts 10 years and has 80 percent fewer parts. There’s no software or upgrades to install, no risk of viruses, and no operating system to deal with and free 24/7 support – all for just $249. We’ve created the most affordable, easiest-to-use and greenest desktop computer available.

Official Website of CherryPal

Microsoft Prepares For Post-Windows Era With 'Midori'

2008-07-31T13:25:00.000-07:00

The operating system is being designed from the ground up to support Internet-based computing and multicore architectures.

By Paul McDougall, InformationWeek, July 31 2008, 1230 hrs

Microsoft researchers are developing a new operating system that's designed from the ground up to support Internet-based computing and multicore architectures and which could one day replace the company's storied Windows franchise.

The operating system, which currently goes by the development name Midori, is being built to solve problems that are beyond the scope of Windows, a so-called fat OS that was first developed before the Internet came into widespread use and most PCs had only a single processor.

It's possible that Midori is being designed for use in cloud computing scenarios, in which business applications reside on centralized servers and are accessed through the Web. Microsoft researchers also are building the OS with an eye to achieving better performance on multicore PCs, company documents show. To date, developers have had little success creating software that's able to fully harness the power of computers that feature two or more cores on a single chip.

Story

Web 2.0 is set for spending boom

2008-04-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

By Maggie Shiels
BBC News, San Francisco

GM is among companies showing a keen interest in Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is set to be embraced by Enterprise 2.0 as businesses prepare to spend nearly $5 billion by 2013 on social networking tools.

Over half of the companies in North America and Europe see Web 2.0 as a priority for next year, a report says.

The news comes as San Francisco plays host to the Web 2.0 conference on next generation of the web.

"This is where we see the future of the web," said conference co-chair Jennifer Pahlka.

"The companies making announcements here are building that future."

Forrester, the research company which carried out the Web 2.0 survey, believes the technologies being developed and unveiled over the coming days represent "a fundamentally new way" for businesses to communicate with employees and customers.

Priority

The report found that consumer giants such as General Motors, McDonald's, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance and Wells Fargo Bank will drive much of this growth and have already embraced tools like blogs, RSS feeds, podcasting and social networking.

Analyst Oliver Young estimates that another 56% of North American and European companies regard Web 2.0 to be a priority in 2008.

All Web 2.0 eyes are on San Francisco this week

"If I wanted to be anywhere in the Web 2.0 economy, I'd want to be on the enterprise side," says Mr Young.

Forrester analysed seven Web 2.0 categories: blogs, mashups, podcasting, RSS, social networking, widgets and wikis. Of these, social networks will attract the greatest levels of investment but even then that will be dwarfed by the multi million dollar revenues the software industry commands.

Mr Young says "Advertising revenue has been hard to come by with even sites such as Facebook finding it hard to monetise their high volumes of traffic.

"Companies are now looking over their shoulder to the business market where even revenues of $50 (£25) per user per month are looking increasingly appealing"

He also points out that there will come a saturation point and investment will start to slow down as Web 2.0 applications become increasingly prevalent and absorbed into collaborative software packages.

'Disneyland for web nerds'

In the meantime, the world of business will get to see what is on offer in the Web 2.0 world as vendors take the wraps off a raft of products, services and applications during this week's conference in San Francisco.

Everything from the latest in cloud computing to blogging software and from mobile technology to rich media applications will be on show.

With around 7,000 people expected to attend, some bloggers have already nicknamed the conference a "five-day retreat to the Disneyland for grown-up web nerds".

Also taking part is a Web Mission from the UK which consists of more than 20 entrepreneurs looking to forge useful business connections and showcase British internet companies.

The businesses, which were selected from over 100 applicants, were chosen because they have the potential to expand into the US.

Story

Snakes can hear through their jaws

2008-03-04T21:32:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON: A new research by US and German scientists has shown that snakes have a second hearing system through their jaws, which can provide valuable insight into their evolution.

According to a report in Discovery News , snakes pick up their prey's vibrations via their jaws, and then send these patterns to their brains for processing.

For years, it was assumed that snakes couldn't hear, that they sensed prey by smell, taste, and in some species, special heat-sensing pits near the nose.

Though basic experiments during the 1970s showed snakes could hear, they didn't explain how.

Now, the new research has proved that with each tiny footstep, a mouse or other prey radiates waves through the ground and air the same way drops of water ripple through a pool and produce a single drip sound.

Just as a ship bobs up and down in response to a wave in the ocean, a snake jaw resting on the ground responds to sound waves carried by the ground.

"The lower jaw of a snake is essentially a ridged cylinder," said Bruce Young, a biology professor at Washburn University. "So in that respect it's not terribly different from a ship," he added.

Therefore, for their research, the scientists borrowed techniques from nautical engineers.

The researchers used the exact equations that measure a ship's movement to model how a snake's jaw would move in response to waves moving through sand or earth.

Just as a ship can move in six different directions - heave, pitch, roll, etc, so can a snake's jaw - up, down, side to side, etc.

Also, just as a ship is more stable the deeper it rides in the water, snakes often bury themselves in sand to make their hearing more precise.

When buried, a snake can more easily detect the differences in the way its jaw moves.

After a snake’s jawbones pick up a sound, it travels into the cochlea, where nerves pick up the signal and transmit it to the brain.

According to the researchers, by hearing through their jaw bone and through a traditional ear, snakes essentially evolved a second way to hear.

Story

Gecko 'begs' insect for honeydew

2008-02-20T08:31:00.000-08:00

A bizarre relationship between a gecko and a sap-sucking insect has been caught on camera for the first time.

The day gecko, which lives in the forests of Madagascar, has been recorded begging a bug for its dinner.

The lizard repeatedly nods its head at the insect, called a plant hopper, until it flicks over small balls of honeydew for the gecko to dine upon.

It is not yet understood why the insect so willingly offers up honeydew at the lizard's behest.

Some believe that the presence of the hungry geckos may keep other predators away from the insect.

The footage was recorded for the BBC One series Life In Cold Blood.

It took the crew several attempts to capture this strange behaviour on camera as plant hoppers are very well camouflaged.

Video

Story

Indian law 'strangling' biodiversity research

2008-02-13T08:05:00.000-08:00

T. V. Padma
5 February 2008
Source: SciDev.Net

[NEW DELHI] A group of Indian botanists say that the country's stringent biodiversity laws are stifling research.

In an article in the latest issue of Current Science (25 January), published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, the scientists say India's "draconian" rules on free exchange of biological samples could "totally isolate Indian biodiversity researchers and is akin to a self-imposed siege on scientists in the country".

India's biodiversity rules, established in 2002, do not permit Indian scientists to deposit their specimens in international museums and stipulate that specimens must be kept in selected national repositories.

The scientists, including K. D. Prathapan from Kerala Agriculture University and Priyadarsanan Dharma Rajan from the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment, Bangalore, say that while preventing biopiracy and commercial exploitation of biological resources is a legitimate concern, it is equally important to protect the interests of scientists engaged in fundamental research.

They add that fears that India's intellectual property rights might be compromised if the samples are used commercially are "baseless and irrational".

Quality research involves extensive collaboration among specialists and institutions across continents, argue Prathapan and colleagues. And in taxonomy, which involves classifying samples, accurate identification of a plant or animal often requires comparison with closely related specimens that may be present in different countries.

They further argue that depositing specimens in different international institutions would act as "an insurance against loss of specimens in India".

But M. Sanjappa, director of the Botanical Survey of India in Kolkata, told SciDev.Net that stringency is required to fight biopiracy in the country.

"The law itself need not be changed [for research]. Instead one can enter into memoranda of understanding with individual countries of scientific groups," Sanjappa says.

He says several Indian institutes are already engaged in the exchange of plant specimens with the international network of herbaria developed by the Vienna-based International Association of Plant Taxonomy.

The scientists hope the Indian government will follow the example of Brazil, which repealed its initially tough rules for biological specimens after protests by scientists (see New system to boost biodiversity access in Brazil).

Link to article in Current Science [33kB]

Story

Microsoft + Yahoo! vs Google ?

2008-02-04T19:54:00.000-08:00

The news in Tech circle for last few days is about merging of Microsoft and Yahoo! and the main motive seen behind this is to counter Google growing market share. For few month it is believed that Yahoo! is not doing so well. And Microsoft has been struggling to get a larger piece of the Internet market pie, which is growing in terms of reach internationally and in cash turnovers n eCom.

Microsoft is the largest software company and Yahoo! was the largest internet company. But now Yahoo! has lost that spot to Google, which Microsoft has been eying for some time. Also over past few months Google has released an array of Free software tools and internet tools which are probably alarming Microsoft.

Now we have to wait and watch if the Microsoft and Yahoo! merger happens or not, and are they combined together able to check Google's growth.

I personally feel, in the end users will benifit, since both Microsoft and Google will put their best to offer diverse, user friendly and robust services for free or at competitive rates.

The Life Cycle of a Blog Post

2008-02-01T03:27:00.000-08:00

Came accross a very interesting diagram and writeup on The Life Cycle of a Blog Post. Do check it out.

You have a blog. You compose a new post. You click Publish and lean back to admire your work. Imperceptibly and all but instantaneously, your post slips into a vast and recursive network of software agents, where it is crawled, indexed, mined, scraped, republished, and propagated throughout the Web. Within minutes, if you've written about a timely and noteworthy topic, a small army of bots will get the word out to anyone remotely interested, from fellow bloggers to corporate marketers. Let's say it's Super Bowl Sunday and you're blogging about beer. You see Budweiser's blockbuster commercial and have a reaction you'd like to share. Thanks to search engines and aggregators that compile lists of interesting posts, you can reach a lot of people — and Budweiser, its competitors, beer lovers, ad critics, and your ex-boyfriend can listen in. "You just need to know how to type," says Matthew Hurst, an artificial intelligence researcher who studies this ecosystem at Microsoft Live Labs. Here's how the whole process goes down during the big game.

Nikon's D60 is world's first Eye-Fi enhanced camera

2008-01-30T09:45:00.000-08:00

It may be a low-end DSLR contender, but Nikon's D60 can still surprise. Seems Nikon and Eye-Fi are in cahoots as the D60 was just announced as the first shooter crowned "Eye-Fi Connected." The D60 recognizes the Eye-Fi wireless 2GB SD card when inserted then automatically adjusts its "power timer settings" so that picture transfers aren't interrupted. Kind of important when uploading ~~hundreds~~ dozens of 10.2 megapixel photos over WiFi. In return for the powerful industry nod, Eye-Fi will offer on-line integration with Nikon's "my Picturetown" this Spring. We'll be sure to go hands-on with the combo at PMA just as soon as we get the chance.

What is eye-fi ?
Story

'Progress in education will dictate the destiny of India' Sam Pitroda

2008-01-20T20:25:00.000-08:00

NEW DELHI: Noting that progress in education will "dictate the destiny" of India in the next century, the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) feels there is "resistance" at various levels in the government to new ideas in the education field.

"There is still resistance at various levels in the government to new ideas, experimentation, process re-engineering, external interventions, transparency and accountability due to rigid organisational structures with territorial mindsets," NKC Chairman Sam Pitroda said.

There was a need to create various collaborative models, dispelling mutual suspicions. Public-private-partnerships, academia-industry partnerships, academia-research laboratories and others would need to be the models rather than working in separate compartments, he said after submitting the second annual "Report to the Nation" to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

"Our country is too large, too complex and too diverse for 'one size fits all' solutions and decentralisation and community participation at the local level would be key to devising effective programmes for implementation, Pitroda told reporters.

In its recommendations on higher education, the NKC said there was an urgent need to restructure the system of affiliated undergraduate colleges which no longer provided a viable model for quality higher education.

Recommending an Independent Regulatory Authority for Higher Education (IRAHE), at an arms length from all stakeholders, it said, "a plethora of regulations without adequate autonomy or accountability for institutions has resulted in a system that is over regulated and under governed."

Story

Sun acquires MySQL

2008-01-17T02:11:00.000-08:00

This morning, Sun Microsystems announced plans to acquire MySQL AB.

The world’s biggest contributor to Open Source SUN: Open Office, Java (now under GPL), GlassFish, NetBeans — and soon MySQL

About MySQL

About SUN

Book : The Google Story

2007-12-30T02:21:00.000-08:00

Finally I got hold on the book "The Google Story" by Devise Vise. I have
been hearing about this book for few months. And wanted to read it.

I ave not finished the book, but just started reading. After going
through Preface and few chapters, I am convinced that everyone should
read it. Specially people using internet, in IT field and students of
Computer Science it is a must read.

The book describes the story behind Google. How the technology and the
business model evolved and has become a successful one. Google is not
that old company. Just started in 1998 and has already become threat to
the monopoly of established players in the market in certain areas.

I will post some more interesting things form the book soon.

BIOTIK : Software to identify tree species

2007-12-26T09:25:00.000-08:00

Last week I got an opportunity to attend the release function of BIOTIK in Bangalore. BIOTIK stands for Biodiversity Informatics and co Operation in Taxonomy for Interactive shared Knowledge base.

A.K. Verma, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Karnataka state was the chief guest.

The software demo was given by Dr, B R Ramesh and team. The characters are entered interactively and without any taxonomically jargon. Everything has a simple and elegant user interface. I found the interface intuitive too. Narrowing down of 100% matching species gives a clear picture of how near are we in the search. The software works on PC and PDA for the tie being, but soon will be available on internet too. They have also promised to make it open source.

Users got opportunity to try the software on PDA and PC during the break. So far about 300 species data is available and ultimately by March 2008 full version with 600 species will be available for Western Ghats. Similar project is done in Lao.

Another highlight for me was meeting Dr. Pascal personally. Dr, Ramesh and Dr. Pascal are well known for the forest maps French Institute of Pondicherry (http://www.ifpindia.org/), which are used by most of the people working on Western Ghats data.

More info on BIOTIK here

and news in Hindu here

Kerala Trip after Sabarimala

2007-12-15T10:14:00.000-08:00

After the Sabarimala Pilgrim we visited two more places in Kerala, Adoor in Pattanathitta District and Attingal near Trivendrum. We visited a Rubber Estate in near Adoor. Where we got to see how Rubber sap is extracted from Trees and later processed into raw rubber sheets.

In the Rubber plantation, I observed few butterflies and Dragonflies and Damselflies.

After spending couple of hours there, we left for Attingal. In the evening we visited a beach in Varkala called Papanashani. It was a nice location with rock cliffs right next to sea. A well developed tourist place. Due to bad light conditions, I could not take any photographs there.

Next day morning we visited a nice temple premise of Sarkara in Chirayinkil. We could see afternoon procession after we finished darshana.

The temple premise was large, with several small temples around the main temple.

The entrance gate was spectacular too.

After that we went to yet another beach in Chirayinkil. This place is developing into a small port.

There is a scenic creek which has formed an Island.

There was a ferry transporting people across the creek to save distance.

Several fisher folks were busy working in creek as well as sea.

The sea water was clean and had a different greenish color.

The contrasting beach sand was adding to the color effect.

We also saw some brightly colored crabs and plants on the coast.

Houses on the banks were worth printing on picture postcards.

Some restoration work was going on one side of the beach

We interacted few fisher folks there.

Though we were not feeling like leaving, to catch the train back to Bangalore, we had to leave the beach.

Complete Album can be viewed Here with more pictures.

e-ticketing everywhere

2007-12-14T10:39:00.000-08:00

It’s everywhere and everyone’s doing it. Be it flying, traveling by train or going to a movie—e-ticketing is becoming the preferred mechanism.

For the record we thought that it would be interesting to rattle off some statistics that speak volumes about the growth of e-ticketing in transportation.

The online passenger reservation site of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd’s (IRCTC) sales from the Internet booking of train tickets in a single month (August 2007) totted up to a staggering 12,90,608 tickets generating revenues of Rs 110 crores. Direct online ticketing now accounts for 40 percent of the tickets sold at most airlines. Air Deccan does an average of Rs 30 million worth of transactions per day.

These are exciting times for Indian e-ticketing. Sales are robust and large corporations and enterprises are pulling out all the stops in their attempts to grow online sales. Online ticketing has caught on with high acceptance in the Indian market. There are many vendors who are trying to capture this space and large corporations are firmly behind online ticketing.

Story

Is web 3.0 really here ?

2007-12-14T10:30:00.000-08:00

The transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 may seem to be a faster one than from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. The question remains, does this new version of the Web do anything for the end user?

Not very long ago, we were talking about the evolution of Web 2.0 and here we are already discussing another new term, viz., Web 3.0. To many, it may sound like another marketing gimmick while others may feel that it is just another name for upcoming Web 2.0 applications. To add to the confusion, major players in the Internet space themselves believe that there is no clear definition of Web 3.0. One thing is for sure; there is a new age of the Web that is about to place its foot in the mainstream and perhaps be the future of the Web.

Story

More women to board IT bus

2007-12-13T07:57:00.000-08:00

Indias booming IT and IT-enabled services industry is a favourite destination of job-seeking women, whose employment in the industry is set to rise dramatically to 45 percent in 2010 from the current 30 percent, says an industry survey.

A survey by National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), the representative organisation of the Indian software firms, says this is due to the inclusive human resource policies of Indian IT firms, which recruit, train, retain and promote women employees as a strategic business plan.

Ratio to improve

“As the IT-ITeS sector moves up the value chain, more women are joining the industry. The male-female ratio is expected to improve to 65:35 by this year-end from 76:24 in 2005,” outgoing Nasscom president Kiran Karnik said here on Wednesday.

“For empowering the women workforce and creating conducive environment to grow equally at their workplace, we have commissioned Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad (IIM-A) to conduct a fresh study on the status of women employees in the IT industry and avenues for their growth in the value chain,” Karnik told about 300 women delegates participating in the Nasscom-IT Women Leadership Summit 2007.

The study is likely to be completed in the next five-six weeks. “It is a survey of what the IT industry does and can do in terms of attitude, perception and practices for an inclusive growth,” Karnik pointed out.

The study will also quiz women employees across the industry to ascertain their assessment of the existing HR policies, work conditions, how sensitive their male counterparts were towards them, and scope for professional advancement in their respective organisations.

“The study is being conducted on various parameters to assess the growth prospects of women workforce in the industry. For instance, the penetration of women at the management level is still inadequate. Even at top levels, women representation is disproportionate,” Karnik noted.

As the nature of their occupation, which includes looking after domestic chores, is burdensome, the study will explore prospects of employing women with flexi-timing so that they could divide their work between office and home.

Story

Sabarimala Pilgrim

2007-12-11T10:18:00.000-08:00

Dear All,

Just returned from Sabarimalai Pilgrim last evening. Here is a brief report.

I started along with two friends Manu and Ajith on 5th December evening bu bus for Adoor. Ajith's in laws say in Addor, where we performed Pooja and put the Mala for the pilgrim. We have to make a kit called Erumudi for it. This contains pooja material like Coconut, Rice, Haldi, Kumkum, Ghee etc. packed in a cloth bag to be held on head. We haired a Car and we three plus Ajith's Parnets-in-laws joined us. Most of the people were black shirt, black Lungi and black Pancha.

We reached the Pamba village, through which the Pumba river flows. We have to walk barefoot form this location about 6 km till the temple through forest. Facilities like drinking water and hotels are available. We started with a dip in the shallow river at about 3:30 pm.

The climb is steep in the beginning. The path is cemented till midway. Hot sun was making us tired, so we had some lemon soda on the way. Medicinal Hot Water was served free of charge on the way. And the volunteers serving the water were really polite and helping. Till midway the path of people going upwards and descending runs parallel. All the people keep on chanting "Swami Sharanam Ayyappa Sharanam" and some other rhyming slogans like we use for Ganesh festival.

After mid way, the slope was gradual, but the path is not cemented. So for people like me, who are not used to walking barefoot, it was bit difficult. Withing a kilometer distance, queue started. There was more rush due to security checking with metal detectors at several places. It took almost 4 hours for us to reach the temple premise through the queue.

The temple premise is beautiful. Initially we need to break a coconut from the Erumudi and then climb 18 steps. These 18 steps are very sacred. There are devasthana personnel to help people to climb and control crowd there. After that we have to take a round in long elevated gallery around the main temple and get the darshan. This time I got a very nice and peaceful darshan of Lord Ayyappa. After that we visited a series of temples in the premises, and performed pooja with Haladi, Bhasma etc.

In one temple, you do the Parikrama with a coconut rolling on the ground with your right hand. This was very interesting. After doing the ghree abhishekam, we went to get Prasad. We exchanges the packet of rice from Erumudi for rice and pickle was served on that. We also got some sweet rice. Looking at the long queues for Aravana Prasad, we dropped the plan and decided to return.

On return we had light dinner of Kanji and Tapioca and reached back Pamba at 12:00 in the night. The pilgrim was enjoyable due to nice Darsha of Lord.

I will write about the trivendrum tour soon.

Print 2.0 – a New Era for Printing

2007-11-16T22:18:00.000-08:00

HP is working on Print 2.0

Key areas of focus of the Print 2.0 strategy:

Make it easier to print from websites, such as blogs and travel sites, and bring new printing capabilities to online properties;

Extend the company’s digital content creation and publishing platforms – for example, Snapfish and Logoworks – across customer segments spanning from consumers to enterprises; and

Deliver a digital printing platform that increases print speeds and lowers the cost of printing for high-volume commercial markets.

Story

Story in Express Computers

NComputing : Getting more from less

2007-11-14T21:37:00.000-08:00

In a country like India with its wide digital divide, a solution like sharing computer processing and computing capacities could make a big difference. Shonali Misra finds out more about NComputing.

Operating a computer these days is as routine as writing in a notebook (not the laptop!) Though computer prices have declined over the years, it is still difficult for every average middle-class person to be able to afford one. In this scenario, when any individual or organisation has an affordable as well as efficient option of computing, cyberspace seems so much more accessible.

Turning complexity simple enters the NComputing solution. Founded in 2003 by a Korean engineer, Young Song, and German inventor, Klaus Maier, dedicating more than 12 years of applied research in multiuser computing, NComputing breaks the affordability and complexity barriers that have limited the PC from being deployed everywhere.

NComputing, Inc. (www.ncomputing.com) is a privately held software and hardware technology design and manufacturing company with offices in Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Korea, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Headquartered in Redwood City, CA, the company's patented technologies drastically lower costs, improve manageability and reduce energy consumption.

Explaining how the system works, Mr Raj Shah, Chief Marketing Officer, NComputers, says, "The NComputing system is based on the simple fact that today's PCs are so powerful that the vast majority of users only need a small fraction of the computing capacity. Most users only tap one to five percent of the more powerful PC's processing power. NComputing taps this unused capacity so that it can be simultaneously shared by 7 to 30 users at a time."

Each user's monitor, keyboard, and mouse are connected to a very small and highly reliable NComputing access device, which is then connected to the shared PC. This thus brings down the cost of infrastructure, installation, and maintenance.

In addition to lower initial costs, the NComputing solution also lowers ongoing support costs. For example, the NComputing access devices only use one watt of electricity—compared to 120 watts of electricity for a dedicated PC.

The 95 percent electricity reduction is especially critical in India where electricity rates are high with India facing a 70,000 MW power shortage along with power supply being unreliable, adds Shah. The lower power consumption also reduces the need for uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems and inverters.

Finally, since fewer PCs need to be maintained, the support, maintenance and replacement costs are significantly lower. The additional bonus is an 80 percent reduction in e -waste.

How it works

With the NComputing solution, each user still has his/her own monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers. However, instead of connecting directly to a PC, these peripherals connect to a small NComputing access terminal on their desk. The access terminals connect either directly (X Series) or over Ethernet (L Series) to the terminal services software using the high performance User eXtention Protocol (UXP).

Presence in India

With a two year presence in India already having delivered around 200 seats, the company plans to work with the central and state government bodies, Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) and school systems. Azim Premji Foundation, Jindal South-west (JSW) - Vijaynagar Steel Plant near Hospet, Apollo Hospitals in Bangalore, and RV Public Girls school, Bangalore, are a few of the local names who have opted for the simplified computer solution. Digital Waves (http://www.digitalwaves.in/) is the Bangalore distributor for NComputers.

Story

TATA CRL and HP Supercomputer ranked Fourth Best in the World

2007-11-13T20:27:00.000-08:00

HP has announced a major milestone in world class supercomputing as the company has collaboratively worked with Computational Research Laboratories (CRL) for the development of the 4th most powerful supercomputer in the world and thus the most powerful in Asia-Pacific region.

CRL is a wholly-owned subsidiary of TATA Sons. HP had been working with CRL to evaluate and plan for an advanced HPC facility in India over the last year. In fact, using HP’s new High-end compute building blocks, CRL managed to successfully build their supercomputer.

CRL plans to use this newly developed supercomputer to push scientific and industrial discovery to infinite limits. For instance, using such a powerful supercomputer, engineers will now be able to model particle dynamics at ultra high resolution - allowing for significant breakthroughs in fields such as nano-photonics and medicine.

So where does HP come into all of this, you might be wondering. HP’s leading c-Class Blade System technology enabled CRL to put this supercomputer capability in place in a record one-month period.

CRL and HP have named this supercomputer “Eka”, which means the “one” in Sanskrit. In actual fact, this machine will act as a stepping-stone for CRL’s Petaflops Project.

Mr. S Ramadorai, Chairman, CRL spoke on this jubilant occasion stating, “This project, based on standard infrastructure building blocks from HP, will herald the availability of affordable research in India. This will pave the way for growth in the Indian research industry by providing affordable access to computational infrastructure to the vast existing research talent pool across verticals and domains.”

Mr. Balu Doraisamy, Managing Director, HP India Sales said, “HP is honored to partner with Tata CRL, a leading name in the field of High Performance Computing, from the inception stages of the project, all the way through its production. We are proud to work collaboratively with Tata CRL to take forward their vision of being a global leader in HPC, building scalable and cutting-edge supercomputer architectures while making affordable research in India a reality.”

The Eka system is one of the first implementations on Fiber Optical Infiniband cables, which have proven very reliable at lengths greater than those generally achieved by copper alternatives.

The 2.5 MW of captive power being generated to keep the Eka system going was a catalyst for Computational Research Labs to create a new data center model for Dense Data Center Layout and Innovative Network Routing Technology that will see advances for HPC future products.

The supercomputer is powered by a Linux open source operating system and it is based on standard hardware to address the issue of application scalability, which has been the bane of supercomputing till date.

TechShout Story

Nature Story

BusinessLine Story

Ban the Bulb !

2007-11-13T00:50:00.000-08:00

Greenpeace is gathering 1 million petitions to force our Government to Ban the Bulb. Simply sign the petition below to join us in fighting climate change.

Click Here to sign the petition

Help build the Encyclopedia of Life

2007-11-04T21:08:00.000-08:00

E.O. Wilson: TED Prize wish: Help build the Encyclopedia of Life

As E.O. Wilson accepts his 2007 TED Prize, he makes a plea on behalf of his constituents, the insects and small creatures, to learn more about our biosphere. We know so little about nature, he says, that we're still discovering tiny organisms indispensable to life; yet we're still steadily destroying nature. Wilson identifies five grave threats to biodiversity (a term he coined), using the acronym HIPPO, and makes his TED wish: that we will work together on the Encyclopedia of Life, a web-based compendium of data from scientists and amateurs on every aspect of the biosphere.

Story

EYE-FI UNVEILS WORLD’S FIRST WIRELESS MEMORY CARD

2007-11-04T08:18:00.000-08:00

Eye-Fi Card Uses Wi-Fi to Automatically Upload Photos to Computers and
Online Photo Sharing and Social Networking Sites

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., October 30, 2007 – Eye-Fi Inc., a company dedicated to helping people navigate, nurture and share their digital memories, today unveiled the Eye-Fi Card – the world's first wireless SD memory card for digital cameras. The Eye-Fi Card uses home Wi-Fi networks to create an effortless and convenient way for users to send photographs from digital cameras to PCs, Macs and online photo and social networking sites. See release entitled “Eye-Fi Announces Support from Seventeen Online Photo Destinations.” Priced at $99.99 with 2GB of storage, the Eye-Fi Card is available now from major online retailers.

“Digital cameras have made it extremely easy to take pictures, but the rest of the process is a hassle,” said Jef Holove, chief executive officer of Eye-Fi. “The Eye-Fi Card removes the barriers and lets users get to the fun part of sharing and printing their memories. We’re putting the magic back into photography.”
Eye-Fi uses home wireless networks to eliminate the time-consuming chore of dealing with cables, card readers or software plug-ins associated with uploading photos. Users simply turn on their digital camera and their pictures are wirelessly uploaded. The Eye-Fi Card works with existing and new SD-compatible digital cameras and stores photos like a conventional SD memory card.

“We know that a large percent of digital images captured each day are never printed or shared. That adds up to significant lost revenues for photo sharing and printing sites,” said IDC analyst Ron Glaz. “We anticipate wireless cameras will fundamentally change the way people manage their digital photographs in the future and believe that Eye-Fi Card will help drive these changes.”

How the Eye-Fi Card works

During a simple set-up process, users can select from among 17 popular online photo sharing, printing, social networking or blogging sites to share their photographs, and select where on their PC or Mac they want to archive their images. Once the set-up is complete, users can focus on taking pictures and sharing memories – and not on the process of uploading photos from their camera.

Eye-Fi’s free upload service allows users to transfer an unlimited number of photos. It handles full-resolution JPEG pictures and intelligently resizes the images if required by the selected online destination.
“We’re thrilled to be among the first to sell the Eye-Fi Card and we expect it to be a big hit for the holidays,” said Aaron Maguire of Buy.com. “Eye-Fi understands how time-starved our customers are, and this solution matches their needs.”

The 2GB wireless SD memory card, which holds approximately 1,000 images, is available now at major online retailers including Amazon.com, Buy.com and Walmart.com for $99.99 USD. For more information, please visit www.eye.fi.

Review of this card

Story

Poachers kill one tiger every day; only 1300 left

2007-10-31T04:25:00.000-07:00

October 31, 2007 15:41 IST
Last Updated: October 31, 2007 15:46 IST

The National Wildlife Board will meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday and brief him about the disastrous impact of poaching and the destruction of the natural habitat of the Tiger, one of the planet's most threatened animals.

Dr Singh, who formed a panel to probe the shocking disappearance of tigers from the Sariska reserve in February 2005, will be told that the country's remaining tiger population could be as low as 1,300.

The panel will also tell him that drastic action has to be taken against the two forces threatening the big cat's chance of survival.

Rajasthan needs to act fast to save the tiger

"That size of a population is scientifically not viable," the Independent quoted Valmik Thapar, a tiger expert and member of the National Board of Wildlife, as saying.

"But in the real world you have to try as hard as you can."

The report in the British newspaper said no one knows precisely how many tigers are left in India, home to perhaps 80 per cent of the world's remaining animals and which, at the turn of the 20th century, was estimated to have up to 100,000 animals. It is believed there were about 5,000 at the start of the decade.

The most recent census, conducted in 2001 and 2002, put the figure at 3,642. But many experts questioned the way in which that count was handled and a new census was carried out by the government-run Wildlife Institute of India using a more scientifically robust method and preliminary results of the new count have put the population at between 1,300 and 1,500.

"The new figures and facts came as no surprise to conservationists, although the government is still recovering from the shock," Belinda Wright, executive director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, was quoted as saying.

'There is more concern for the tiger outside India!'

"In Madhya Pradesh, the study has shown a loss of 61 per cent on the figures of the previous tiger census. The state of Maharashtra has shown a loss of 57 per cent."

She added: "In the past census... many tigers were found outside the tiger reserves. The new study shows virtually no tigers outside the tiger reserves."

Experts say not enough is being done to halt the continued poaching of the animals, which are highly prized in China and other parts of East Asia for their pelts and body parts.

The report said a tiger skin can fetch up to �5,300 while tiger penises -- traditionally believed to have near-magical properties -- can fetch �14,000 per kilo.

The tiger has suffered from a loss of its habitat as a result of large-scale mining and hydro-power dam projects. The loss of habitat and prey encourages tigers, pure carnivores, to seize domestic livestock which in turn aggravates local farmers, the report said.

The tiger is the national symbol but, in the past five years, poachers have been killing them at the rate of one a day, campaigners believe.

Recently, in China, a farmer clicked about 70 pictures of a South China tiger in the wild. The South China tiger was believed to have become extinct and has not been spotted in the past 20 years.

China has banned hunting in the region and officials are searching for the tiger there.

Story

20.025 !

2007-07-26T04:23:00.000-07:00

Priya Ganapati

Classes are useless. If the company receives any resume and we find the guy has attended classes we throw the resume out," declares Bhavin Turakhia.

Bhavin is the 19-year-old director of Web hosting and applications development company Direct Information Private Limited. The company has built a turnover of Rs 400,000 over the last six months of its existence.

The unconventional HRD policy will not sound so drastic when you consider that the four-head-strong staff of Direct Information is hardly out of college and still at war with teachers who are generations removed.

Bhavin has just graduated from Bombay University with a bachelor's degree in commerce. But he founded Direct Information when he was still at college.

Web Promotion Executive Divyank Turakhia is 17 and the second founder. He is Bhavin's younger brother. Divyank is also studying to graduate in commerce and is currently in the first year of the programme.

Systems Analyst and Project Leader Hitesh Makhijani is 20. Hitesh joined the venture only two months ago. He too is going to graduate with a degree in commerce. Hitesh is in the final year.

Technical Support Executive Rahul Monga is the oldest man in the start-up. He is 23. Out of college for two years now... And considered over the hill by his colleagues.

"Yeah! He's the buddah out here..." chorus the others.

Full Story

Multimedia Linux device

2007-06-17T22:00:00.000-07:00

BS Reporter / Mumbai June 14, 2007

It's an MP3 player, FM radio, video and photo display device, an e-book reader and a sound recorder – all bundled in one.

What more, it's a Linux-based personal computer ready for web, email and office use. Touted as the Swiss army knife of handheld gadgets, Wizpy, has now been launched in India by Japan-based Turbolinux.

The nifty tool which is a multimedia media player that contains a PC-bootable version of the Linux operating system is priced at Rs 11,995.

“This palm sized mobile device enables the user to have their own personal computer environment through which they can access documents, e-mails and the internet, keeping their data secure and confidential,” said Deepak Wassan, president, Turbolinux.

Pegged as a ‘PC 2.0’ product, Turbolinux has partnered with eSys Technologies and online portal cafegadgets in for distribution in India. “Early adopters who are curious about using Linux but either don't want to or can't install the operating system are our target customers,” he said.

Bouyed by its success in universities of Vietnam, the company is aiming to gain foothold in the education sector moving on to the corporate sector before targeting the home users.

The pocket-sized device, that can play audio and video files, is really a Linux carrot of sorts, allowing users to store a complete Linux desktop in its memory. “You can plug the Wizpy into a PC's USB port and boot up the Linux system with all its user settings, passwords, bookmarks, etc,” added Wassan.

Turbolinux will ship 50,000 units of Wizpy to India by the end of this fiscal and also plans to introduce products in the middleware and applications areas.

Story

Wireless energy transfer turns on bulb at MIT, eliminating batteries next?

2007-06-13T04:54:00.000-07:00

By R. Colin Johnson

Courtesy of EE Times
(06/11/2007 4:54 PM EDT)

PORTLAND, Ore. — Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have demonstrated the wireless powering of a light bulb for the first time. They achieved the feat using a technique dubbed WiTricity, which employs magnetically coupled resonance between matched antennas.

MIT assistant professor Marin Soljacic, inventor of the technique, described it at the American Institute of Physics' Industrial Physics Forum last fall. His MIT team now has demonstrated the concept by remotely powering a 60-watt bulb from a distance of six feet.

The key to the technique is its use of nonradiative magnetic coupling. "Two same-frequency resonant objects will tend to couple with each other strongly, while only interacting weakly with off-resonant environmental objects," said Soljacic. "That's the physics principle enabling nonradiative wireless energy transfer."

Today magnetic coupling is used over short distances to recharge batteries such as in electric toothbrushes, but it requires that the device under charge be located very near the induction coils, since the energy of the magnetic field falls off very quickly with distance. In conventional magnetic induction, the distance can only be increased by increasing the power of the magnetic field.

WiTricity, on the other hand, uses matched resonant antennas that enable the magnetic coupling to take place over distances of several feet, without boosting the power of the magnetic field. Other groups have demonstrated radio-frequency wireless power transfers over longer distances, but only for micro- to milliwatts.

The demonstration setup consisted of matched copper coils about three feet in diameter, with the transmitting coil attached to a power source operating in the meghahertz range. The receiving coil resonated within the nonradiative magnetic field, oscillating at the same frequency, thereby efficiently using magnetic induction to illuminate the bulb.

The resonant antennas remain coupled even when objects are placed between them, as Soljacic showed during the light bulb demonstration by positioning his entire design team between the sending and receiving antennas. The light bulb continued to be illuminated despite the obstacles.

Without the resonance enabled by the matched antennas, the team claims, 1 million times more energy would have to be pumped into the transmitting coil to enable conventional, nonresonant magnetic induction.

Next the team wants to demonstrate powering a laptop computer wirelessly, by designing computer room antennas that would match an antenna coil to be built into the base of the laptop. The team not only believes it will be able to supply enough power to keep the laptop's batteries recharged but predicts it will be able to eliminate the battery altogether by directly supplying power to the laptop.

Funding the research were the Army Research Office, MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN), the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. Soljacic's team members were professors Peter Fisher and John Joannopoulos (who is ISN's director) and students Andre Kurs, Aristeidis Karalis and Robert Moffatt.

Story

The world of ants

2007-05-23T21:19:00.000-07:00

KUMARAN SATHASIVAM

ON A TRAIL WITH ANTS — A Handbook of the Ants of Peninsular India: Ajay Narendra and M. Sunil Kumar; Copies can be had from The Heritage, Rangarao Road, Shankarpuram, Bangalore-560004. Rs. 600.

The popular literature on Indian animals has hitherto dealt with almost entirely just a few groups: the vertebrates — particularly the mammals and the birds — and the butterflies. The few broad works on insects as a whole and on spiders are the exceptions. Recently, dragonflies and damselflies have received more specific treatment and subsequently are being "discovered" by Indian naturalists. On a Trail with Ants is an essay adding to the set of select taxa another, perhaps less tractable, group of animals. The "trail" takes one deeper into the world of ants than do the other broader works on Indian insects.

Exploring various topics related to ants, with one extended chapter (out of a total of 10) devoted to 50 species accounts, this well produced book does not particularly fall into a conventional field guide format. The chapters are imaginatively titled — Mixing Business with Pleasure — concerned with ecological interactions of ants, is overly so.

One of the chapters is devoted to the complicated aspects of one of the trademarks of ants, their social behaviour. Another chapter is about the fascinating lives of weaver ants. These ants are arboreal, building nests by binding leaves together with the silk produced by their own larvae. Weaver ants use the larvae as live shuttles as they "weave" the silk between the leaves!

Magnified images

The book is illustrated throughout with impressive magnified colour images. Indeed, a section or at least some hints on ant photography would not have gone amiss. Often the pictures depict dramatic action, including assassination bids. Some pictures could do with more elaborate captions. Figure 8 is one such: it shows worker ants preventing a winged male ant from flying out of the nest. But why are they doing this? Is this behaviour commonly observed?

The species accounts are short, with a strong emphasis on physical descriptions of the ants. An elaborate set of symbols has been used to convey pictorial information relating to each species. A butterfly silhouette is used to indicate that an ant is predatory; the "recycle" symbol means it uses temporary nests and so on. These symbols are somewhat reminiscent of railway guides indicating the facilities available at a station.

The images of ants are literally larger than life; despite the detail, perhaps because of the detail, they convey an impression that they are somewhat different from that of the living animal. This makes identification from the pictures difficult. Thus it takes some effort to determine that the red-thoraxed painfully stinging ant many of us have encountered as children at school is the one named the Arboreal Bicolored Ant.

Features

Unfortunately, the book has no index, and cross-references with page numbers are scarce, so that searching for a particular species account is tedious. For instance, Diacamma ceylonense is referred to in "Ant Watching", with no indication that there is a species account for this ant in pages 158-159.

The final chapter provides a rather tangential but interesting sketch: it outlines how lessons learnt from ant behaviour are used in technology in a range of fields from telecommunication networks to traffic management.

An extensive glossary has been provided. Its utility could have been enhanced by the provision of simple illustrations — to describe what pectinate tibial spurs are, for example.

In the edifice of Indian natural history study, one finds few books that have served to create the foundation upon which the structure has been built. This book, a pioneering look at the life of ants, is a foundation stone upon which an extension remains to be constructed.

Date:01/05/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/br/2007/05/01/stories/2007050100441400.htm

In Wake of Tragedy, Speculators Snatch Up Profitable Web Names

2007-04-19T02:52:00.000-07:00

People respond to tragedy in different ways. Some pray. Some watch the news. Some try to get rich.

Just hours after a student at Virginia Tech went on a killing spree that claimed 33 lives Monday, speculators began snatching up domain names related to the shooting.

Dozens of people registered sites like vatechbloodbath.com, virginiatechmurders.com and blacksburgmassacre.com through companies like GoDaddy.com and Enom, Inc. Several of the names went up for sale on eBay later that day.

The blood wasn't even dry in Norris Hall. In that building, home to the engineering department, Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old South Korean majoring in English and living on the Blacksburg campus, fired round after round from his Glock 9 mm and Walther .22-caliber handguns into helpless students and teachers, before turning his pistols on himself and ending the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history.

For most people around the country, this was a shocking and grievous moment. For the new owner of vtechkilling.com, it was an opportunity. The domain was registered through Moniker Online Services on Monday, and soon afterwards was up for auction on eBay. The registrant posted an image of an assault rifle with the listing and described vtechkilling.com as the "perfect domain name for any memorandum or other site dedicated to the recent mass killings at Virginia Tech."

The bidding opened at one cent. The "Buy It Now" price was set at $500. In an eBay auction, "Buy It Now" allows shoppers to skip the bidding altogether by paying a lump sum up front. The registrant did not respond to an interview request.

That domain was offered at a cheap price. Another, more ambitious, would-be profiteer asked for $100,000 for five sites he'd registered through GoDaddy, including vamassacre.com and vatechcarnage.com. He covered his ad in American flags and described his sites as "Great Domain Names for a Memorial Fund Development….Our Hearts go out to all the victims and families of Virginia Tech Massacre!"

Matt Owens opened bidding for virginia-tech-rampage.com at $1,000. He set his Buy It Now price at $10,000. On the listing, Owens wrote that virginia-tech-rampage.com is a "great domain name for development!" He posted a photo of an angel in a short white dress hovering next to a cross.

When reached by phone on Tuesday, Owens was surprised that his choice of domain name had provoked a backlash. "I've been getting hate mail," he said. "I didn't think it through. I was just thinking about the money first."

Owens, who has kids in college, said he never intended to cause any harm or make light of the shootings. "I wasn't trying to do anything bad. I figured someone might buy the name and use it or not use it." Owens pointed out that the word "rampage" has been in wide circulation by the media. He said companies should consider taking sensitive names off the market after a tragedy and that eBay shouldn't allow auctions for certain items.

Ebay removed most of the potentially offensive listings from its website Tuesday, but could not be reached for comment.

Not every domain snatched up in the wake of Monday's tragedy wound up on eBay, and it's likely some of the registrants plan online memorials, or acted quickly to keep the domains from falling into the hands of profiteers.

In an interview with Wired News on Monday, GoDaddy's vice president of public relations, Elizabeth Driscoll, said company policy is to allow any name to be registered at any time. GoDaddy intervenes if it learns that a site is being used for "morally objectionable or illegal purposes." Normally, GoDaddy is alerted to bad behavior by registrants when a complaint is filed through its abuse department.

"It's a fact of life that when a major event happens, whether it's positive or negative, people flock to register domain names. ...We don't have the ability to monitor every site."

Story

Now you can blog in Hindi

2007-04-16T21:39:00.000-07:00

Our friends Anupama and Nitin have posted on the Google blog about the Hindi transliteration feature that they added to Blogger:

Enabling the transliteration option allows you to type out Hindi words using phonetically equivalent English script, and see the words getting transformed into the corresponding Devanagari script. The plus is that you now don't need to learn complicated mappings from English alphabet combinations to Hindi letters. That means you really don't need to worry about WeiRD UpPerCasEing to get the right Hindi spellings.

To get started, enable Hindi transliteration here (or by going to Settings > Basic). We have a help article explaining how it works, and a thread on the Blogger Help Group to talk about it.

Introducing Gmail Paper

2007-04-16T21:26:00.000-07:00

Beginning of the month we all saw this on the gmail front page. And I started wondering what business model is Google following for this one ?

New! Introducing Gmail Paper

Everyone loves Gmail. But not everyone loves email, or the digital era. What ever happened to stamps, filing cabinets, and the mailman? Well, you asked for it, and it’s here. We’re bringing it back.

A New Button
Now in Gmail, you can request a physical copy of any message with the click of a button, and we'll send it to you in the mail.

Simplicity Squared
Google will print all messages instantly and prepare them for delivery. Allow 2-4 business days for a parcel to arrive via post.

Total Control
A stack of Gmail Paper arrives in a box at your doorstep, and it’s yours to keep forever. You can read it, sort it, search it, touch it. Or even move it to the trash—the real trash. (Recycling is encouraged.)

Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe
Google takes privacy very seriously. But once your email is physically in your hands, it's as secure as you want to make it.

Learn more about Gmail Paper

And after few days I realized, Gmail has fooled me. One of the best April Fool pranks I came across.

The Unknown Orb-Weaver of India

2007-04-04T20:36:00.000-07:00

Orb-weaver (Araneus bilunifer), Family Araneidae
Dudwa National Park, Northern India

Explanation: Here is an immature orb-weaver spider. Orb-weavers are cosmopolitan, especially this genus Araneus, and many species of this genus are widespread and well studied.

However ... although first described in 1900, this particular species -- known only by its scientific name, Araneus bilunifer -- appears to be largely unstudied, is little-known, and apparently seldom photographed. It is endemic to India (found nowhere else) and one of 22 species of genus Araneus in India.

This young specimen was no larger than the nail on my little finger. It was clinging to the outside wall of my rustic bungalow in a national park in northern India. In a study of spiders in rice paddies of Kerala, India, only a single specimen of this species was found.

Information
Sebastian, P.A., M.J. Mathew, S.P. Beevi, J. Joseph, and C.R. Biju. 2005. The spider fauna of the irrigated rice ecosystem in central Kerala, India across different elevational ranges. The Journal of Arachnology 33:247-255.

Story or Here

The moth in spider’s clothing

2007-03-31T08:20:00.000-07:00

Biological mimicry is widespread in nature. Many poisonous or otherwise unpalatable organisms display warning signs, such as black and yellow or black and red stripes, to deter would-be predators. Batesian mimicry to refers to non-poisonous organisms which closely resemble poisonous ones. (This phenomenon is named after Walter Henry Bates, who first proposed it in 1862.) Some organisms, such as the stick insect, are camouflaged, while others behave in deceptive ways when approached by a predator.

Some organisms are known to lure prey by mimicking them, but the converse situation, in which prey mimics its predator, is very rare.

Read full story and Videos

Thanks to Kishen Das for sharing the news.

Venomous Snake Count Rises Dramatically

2007-03-28T00:07:00.001-07:00

By Corey Binns Special to LiveScience posted: 27 March 2007 11:07 am ET

A newly identified deadly snake in India is one of several now challenging the lon

Twelve hours after being bitten by the hump-nosed pit viper, a patient's blood becomes incapable of coagulating. The patient bleeds and develops renal failure. There is no antivenom for the viper.

The hump-nosed pit viper is often mistaken for a saw-scaled viper, one of many new details in the March issue of the journal Wilderness and Environmental Medicine.

There are more than 250 snake species in India and more than 50 of those are venomous. Estimates for the number of venomous snake species in the United States range from 20 to 29, with all falling into four groups—rattlesnakes, copperheads, cottonmouths and coral snakes. (Technically, snakes are venomous, not poisonous, as they inject their toxin. Poison must be inhaled or injected.)

Snakebites cause an estimated 50,000 fatalities annually in India, said Ian Simpson, a member of the WHO Snakebite Treatment Group, but just a dozen or fewer per year in the United States.

The Big Four

The hump-nosed pit viper isn't one of the "Big Four," a list of the region's most deadly snakes that consists of the Indian cobra, common krait, Russell's viper and saw-scaled viper, which now is known to closely resemble the hump-nosed pit viper. The difficulty in distinguishing the two snakes has likely led to many deaths due to confusion over how to treat the bites.

"In the last century the 'Big Four' provided an easy means to alerting people to some of the most significant snakes," said Simpson, also with the Tamil Nadu Government Snakebite Task Force in India. "Now it is outdated and proving confusing to doctors."

"It also curtails research into how many medically significant species there are," he said. "Some people just refuse to accept that there are more than four and cling to outdated ideas that are decades out of date."

By constantly referring to the Big Four, Simpson said, doctors are misled about what antivenom treatment is best for their patients. Meanwhile, antivenom manufacturers have yet to produce new concoctions to protect against snakebites other than the Big Four.

Better training

Improving doctor training is a key factor for better treatment of snakebites, Simpson said.

Much of Indian medical education is taught with Western textbooks that have snakebite chapters only relevant to American species. This leads to unnecessary antivenom use and much confusion.

In addition, doctors in rural clinics uneducated in treating snakebites refer patients to better-equipped hospitals that often require the patients to travel for hours, often in a state of agony and/or shock, without antivenom.

"We have developed protocols and support material to enable primary care doctors to treat snakebite with confidence," Simpson told LiveScience. "These are being implemented in a number of states in India."
g-held concept that there are only four dangerous snakes in the country, sometimes known as the land of snakes.

The hump-nosed pit viper is one among at least 13 snakes now counted as having medical significance in India in a recent report released by members of the World Health Organization's Snakebite Task Force.

The hump-nosed pit viper, Hypnale hypnale, a newly identified poisonous snake in India. Credit: Ian D. Simpson, WHO Snakebite Treatment Group and Tamil Nadu Government Snakebite Taskforce

Story

LiveScience

Road kills: Assessing insect casualties using flagship taxon

2007-03-27T21:13:00.000-07:00

R. Shyama Prasad Rao* and M. K. Saptha Girish
Green Club, No. 1456, E&F Block, Ramakrishna Nagar,
Mysore 570 022, India

Roads and traffic are the central features of human development, but a severe threat to forest and wildlife. In this study we have assessed the extent of insect road kills in two national parks and a suburb-scrubland. The diversity and abundance of insect casualties were enumerated and compared across sites. Dragonflies and butterflies were the major insect kills with higher casualties on Sunday, which is associated with increased traffic load. Butterfly road kills were represented by high species diversity. This study reveals severity of invertebrate/insect casualties on road, conservation needs and surprising new frontiers of road ecology.

Article

Down to earth, in search of the unknown

2007-03-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

Aditya Ghosh

Mumbai, March 11, 2007

This scientist ignores the white lab coat and gets his hands dirty in an unusually vast laboratory brimming with biodiversity. Down in the Western Ghats, Verad Giri often disappears to crawl and burrow in search of slithery species unknown to the world.

As we spoke at the Bombay Natural History Society, Giri brought out a rectangular box from under the table. Inside it floated black lizards in several sizes, with yellow stripes on their back. "Look, they are gorgeous,'' said Giri. I nodded, but to my untrained eye they looked like chameleons wrinkled in formalin solutions.

Two species Giri introduced to the world in 2004 - Indotyphus maharashtraensis - are even named after him and British experts Mark Wilkinson and David Gower who had then flown to India to assist his muddy explorations.

Giri is now on the verge of announcing the discovery of three hitherto unknown species, two legless and one with legs. The former are from a group called caecilians, reptiles with an elongated body resembling little snakes. The leggy one is a lizard, but the researchers have next to no available data to work on.

"Conventionally, the Western Ghats was always considered a much explored region. But all the five new species are from that region and they are all new to science," Giri said.

The subjects of Giri's attention are 6 inches to 1.5 m long, with small eyes that have a protective skin cover that oftens leads to a misconception that they are blind. They are ecologically significant, and help retain soil fertility and a balance between chemical components in soil. But scientists know little about their reproductive biology or other habits.

So Giri has developed a set of internationally accepted markers: a set of physical characteristics and identification details to help identify, catagorise these creatures. "I am now working on a set of markers for lizards," he said.

The scientist's unusual work has steadily interested the locals around the Western Ghats to make a start in conserving biodiversity. "Groups like the Malabar Nature Conservation in Amboli and Green Guards in Kolhapur have been formed, and the locals now talk pure science," said Giri with a touch of pride. "They know more about these species and recognise their identification markers better than scientists."

But Giri did not reveal anything about his new discoveries. The findings have been accepted for publication in an international journal. "They are some remarkable creatures we had no idea about," is all he divulged.

The creatures he works with are not glamorous like tigers and elephants. They are slimy, dirty animals most people would despise. Funds are hard to come by. But as Giri pointed out, 'somebody's got to do this research.'

Email author: aditya.ghosh@hindustantimes.com

Story

The vanishing cat

2007-03-13T00:05:00.000-07:00

Cruel almost beyond belief, Chinese farms are breeding hundreds of tigers in battery cages ... so they can be killed and turned into wine...

Although the Xiongsen tiger park, near Guilin in south-east China, appears to be a depressingly typical Third World zoo, with a theme park restaurant and open areas where tigers roam, it actually hides a far more sinister secret — it's a factory farm breeding tigers to be eaten and made into wine.

Visitors to the park can dine on strips of stir-fried tiger with ginger and Chinese vegetables. Also on the menu are tiger soup and a spicy red curry made with tenderised strips of the big cat. Visitors can wash it all down with a glass or two of wine made from Siberian tiger bones.

A waitress at the farm’s restaurant says: “The tiger meat is produced here. It’s our business. When Government officials come here, we kill a tiger for them so they have fresh meat. Other visitors are given meat from tigers killed in fights. We now have 140 tigers in the freezer”.

Tigers and other endangered species are being reared on an industrial scale throughout China, despite international treaties forbidding this. The Guilin farm alone has 1,300 tigers, including the incredibly rare and elusive Siberian sub-species.

It rears and slaughters Bengal, South China and White tigers. More than 300 African lions and 400 Asiatic black bears are also reared here for food and traditional Chinese medicines.

The Chinese authorities claim that farms like the one at Guilin are a vital part of the country's conservation efforts, and that they will one day release these endangered creatures back into the wild.

Virtually all the tigers from the Guilin farm end up at a winery 100 miles to the north, their carcasses dumped in huge vats of rice wine and left to rot for up to nine years.

The Chinese believe that the tiger's strength passes into the wine as its body decomposes. They also believe that it is a powerful medicine that wards off arthritis, strengthens bones and acts as a general tonic.

Smelling like a mixture of methylated spirits, antiseptic and congealed meat, it is difficult to believe that anyone would willingly drink it, and yet people pay up to £100 a pint for it.

Tiger farmers also have their eyes on the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. They hope that a huge influx of tourists will lead to increased demand for tiger wine.

Although it is illegal to trade internationally in such tiger products as wine, the Chinese are lobbying hard to get the law relaxed. This June, the Chinese Government is expected to press the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to allow the trade in 'medicines' such as wine produced from farmed tigers.

If agreed, it will lead to a massive increase in tiger farming and tens of thousands of these noble beasts will spend their lives in battery cages. If the Chinese get their way, then it will almost certainly drive the tigers over the cliff into extinction.

Story

Rare Indian bird rediscovered at Thai wastewater treatment plant

2007-03-10T09:11:00.000-08:00

By AP

Wednesday March 7, 06:00 AM

A wetland bird that eluded scientists for nearly 130 years has been rediscovered at a wastewater treatment plant in Thailand, Birdlife International announced Wednesday.

Little is known about the large-billed reed-warbler because it had not been seen since its discovery in 1867 in the Sutlej Valley of India. Because it was so rare, scientists had long debated whether it represented a true species or was an aberrant individual of a more common species.

But that debate appears to be settled after ornithologist Philip Round of Bangkok's Mahidol University captured one of the birds on March 27, 2006, at a wastewater treatment center outside Bangkok, the Cambridge, England-based conservation organization said.

"Although reed-warblers are generally drab and look very similar, one of the birds I caught that morning struck me as very odd, something about it didn't quite add up," Round said in a statement, adding that it had a long beak and short wings.

"Then, it dawned on me. I was probably holding a large-billed reed-warbler," he said. "I was dumbstruck. It felt as if I was holding a living dodo."

To confirm his findings, Round sent photographs and DNA samples of the bird to Prof. Staffan Bensch of Sweden's Lund University, who had previously examined the Indian specimen. He confirmed it represented a valid species.

More evidence that the large-billed reed-warbler was a unique species came to light six months after Round's discovery _ tucked away in a museum drawer.

A second new specimen was found in the collection of the Natural History Museum at Tring, England, in a drawer of Blyth's reed-warblers collected in India in the 19th century. This one was caught in 1869 in India's Uttar Pradesh and Bensch has since confirmed its identification using DNA.

"Finding one large-billed reed-warbler after 139 years was remarkable. Finding a second right under ornithologists' noses is nothing short of a miracle," BirdLife International's Stuart Butchart said in a statement.

Butchart and other bird experts said the two discoveries have raised the prospect that additional large-billed reed-warblers will be found in Myanmar, Bangladesh or in other parts of Thailand.

"Almost nothing is known about this mysterious bird," Butchart said.

"The Indian specimen has short, round wings and we speculated it is resident or a short-distance migrant, so its appearance in Thailand is very surprising," he said. "A priority now is to find out where the large-billed reed-warbler's main population lives, whether it is threatened, and if so, how these threats can be addressed."

___

On the Net:

Birdlife International: http://www.birdlife.org/

Story

An Energy Revolution

2007-03-09T09:45:00.000-08:00

By Robert Zubrin

The world economy is currently running on a resource that is controlled by our enemies. This threatens to leave us prostrate. It must change—and the good news is that it can change, quickly.

Using portions of the hundreds of billions of petrodollars they are annually draining from our economy, Middle Easterners have established training centers for terrorists, paid bounties to the families of suicide bombers, and funded the purchase of weapons and explosives. Oil revenues underwrite new media outlets that propagandize hatefully against the United States and the West. They pay for more than 10,000 radical madrassahs set up around the world to indoctrinate young boys with the idea that the way to paradise is to murder Christians, Jews, and Hindus. It was men energized by oil-revenue resources who killed 3,000 American civilians on September 11, 2001, and who have continued to kill large numbers of Westerners in Iraq and elsewhere. We are thus subsidizing acts of war against ourselves.

And we have not yet reached the culmination of the process. Iran and other states are now using petroleum lucre to underwrite the development of nuclear weapons, and insulate themselves from the economic sanctions that could result. Once produced, these nuclear weapons could be used directly or made available to terrorists to attack U.S., European, or Israeli cities and military forces. This is one of the gravest threats to the next generation—and, again, we are paying for it ourselves with oil revenue.

Our responses to these provocations have been muted and hapless. Why? Because any forceful action on our part against nations like Iran and Saudi Arabia could result in the disruption of oil supplies that the world economy is completely dependent upon. We can’t stand up to our enemies because we rely upon them for the fuel that is our own lifeblood.

And the situation is even worse below the surface. In addition to financing terror directly and indirectly, oil exporters are using their wealth to corrupt our political system. Important Washington, D.C. law firms and lobbying organizations have been put on the payroll of Arab nations to blunt any attempts at retaliation for their promotion of terrorism. Arab investors have made enormous buys in media organizations that could allow them to influence U.S. public opinion.

All this, however, is mere prologue. China and India are rapidly industrializing, and within a decade or two the number of cars in the world will double or triple. If the world remains on the oil standard, the income streams of many noxious oil exporters will soar. We will be impoverished to the same degree they are enriched. The vast sums transferred will not only finance global jihad and dangerous weapons development in the Middle East, but also increase potential for manipulation of the U.S. and Western economies. At currently projected rates of consumption, by the year 2020 over 90 percent of the world’s remaining petroleum reserves will be in the Middle East, controlled by people whose religion obligates them to subjugate us.

In light of these realities, current U.S. energy policy is a scandal. There is no reason the United States should remain helpless, allowing itself to be looted by people who are using the proceeds to undermine us. A much higher degree of energy independence is possible, even apparent, yet victory is not being pursued. To see how insane our national energy policies have been, let’s review recent failures. Then I’ll describe a starkly better alternative.

CONSERVATION AND ALTERNATIVE-FUEL DAYDREAMS

Ritualistic calls by utopians, moralists, and environmental absolutists for energy conservation are utterly inadequate and doomed to failure. To see this, simply run the numbers. Every year, about 17 million cars are sold in the U.S.—roughly 10 percent of the worldwide total. Even if Americans were to buy only hybrid cars offering a 30 percent fuel saving over existing models, and none of them drove more, and there was no expansion in the U.S. vehicle fleet, this effort would result in only a 3 percent annual reduction in global gasoline use.

Conservation, however, offers no prospect of being even this effective. Most industry analysts predict a hybrid market share of less than 1 percent. At the same time, the total number of cars is increasing. Under any realistic conservation scenario, total gasoline consumption will continue to rise and the looting of our economy by oil producers will continue. Conservation through gasoline efficiency is, quite simply, a losing strategy. It is like trying to survive in a gas chamber by holding your breath. We need to break out of the gas chamber.

Today’s favorite alternatives to oil are wind, solar, hydroelectric, and nuclear power. They each have strengths and weaknesses, but the bottom line is that these are all methods of generating electricity—and electricity is far from the central issue of energy independence. The United States has plenty of coal, and if necessary could easily generate all of its electric power that way.

The key to energy independence, rather, is liquid fuel to power cars, trucks, trains, ships, and airplanes. These vehicles are not mere conveniences; they are the sinews of our economy and the fundamental instruments of our military strength. Our civilization cannot be sustained without efficient liquid fuels, and there is no foreseeable prospect whatsoever of cost effective, large-scale generation of liquid fuels from wind, solar, hydroelectric, or nuclear sources.

The energy panacea of the moment is a concept called the “hydrogen economy.” Theorists propose to transition U.S. energy usage to hydrogen—a common element which, when combined with oxygen, releases energy with only water as a waste product. With hydrogen, it is claimed, we can achieve not only energy independence but also an end to pollution and global warming at the same time. The concept is entirely fraudulent.

Hydrogen is not a source of energy. In order to be obtained, it must be made—either through the electrolysis of water, or through the breakdown of petroleum, natural gas, or coal. Either process necessarily consumes more energy than the hydrogen it produces.

When hydrogen is made by electrolysis, the process yields 85 units of hydrogen energy for every 100 units of electrical energy used to break down the water. That is 85 percent efficiency. If the hydrogen is then used in a fuel cell in an electric car, only about 55 percent of its energy value will be used; the rest is wasted to heat and so forth. The net result of these two processes: the amount of useable energy yielded by the hydrogen will be only about 47 percent as much as went into producing it in the first place. And if the hydrogen is burned in an internal combustion engine to avoid the high production costs of fuel cells, the net efficiency of this vehicle will be closer to 25 percent.

Hydrogen produced from hydrocarbons instead of water also throws away 40 to 60 percent of the total energy in the feedstock. This method actually increases the nation’s need for fossil fuels, as well as greenhouse gas emissions. While hydrogen could also be produced by nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, or wind power, the process would continue to be dragged down by the fundamental inefficiency of hydrogen production. Such power supplies could always do more to reduce fossil fuel requirements simply by sending their electric power directly to the grid.

The bottom line is that hydrogen is not a source of energy. It is a carrier of energy, and one of the least practical carriers we know of.

Consider: A standard molecular weight (or mole) of hydrogen gas, when reacted with oxygen, yields 66 watt-hours of energy. Meanwhile, a mole of methane (the primary component of natural gas) produces 218 watt-hours of energy. An equal number of moles of both can be stored in a tank of equal size and strength. Thus, a car that runs on compressed methane will be able to store more than three times the energy, and travel three times as far, as the same car running on hydrogen. In addition, the methane would be cheaper.

In short, from the point of view of production, distribution, environmental impact, and ease of use, the hydrogen economy makes no sense. Its fundamental premise is at variance with the most basic laws of physics. The charlatans who are promoting hydrogen as a solution to our energy woes are doing the nation an immense disservice.

THE ALCOHOL SOLUTION

To liberate ourselves from the threat of foreign economic domination, undercut the financiers of terror, and give ourselves the free hand necessary to deal with Middle Eastern extremists, we must devalue their resources and increase the value of our own. We can do this by taking the world off the petroleum standard and putting it on an alcohol standard.

This may sound like a huge and impossible task, but with gasoline prices well over $2 per gallon, the means to accomplish it are now at hand. Congress could make an enormous step toward American energy independence within a decade or so if it would simply pass a law stating that all new cars sold in the U.S.A. must be flexible-fuel vehicles capable of burning any combination of gasoline and alcohol. The alcohols so employed could be either methanol or ethanol.

The largest producers of both ethanol and methanol are all in the western hemisphere, with the United States having by far the greatest production potential for both. Ethanol is made from agricultural products. Methanol can also be made from biomass, as well as from natural gas or coal. American coal reserves alone are sufficient to power every car in the country on methanol for more than 500 years.

Ethanol can currently be produced for about $1.50 per gallon, and methanol is selling for $0.90 per gallon. With gasoline having roughly doubled in price recently, and with little likelihood of a substantial price retreat in the future, high alcohol-to-gasoline fuel mixtures are suddenly practical. Cars capable of burning such fuel are no futuristic dream. This year, Detroit will offer some two dozen models of standard cars with a flex-fuel option available for purchase. The engineering difference is in one sensor and a computer chip that controls the fuel-air mixture, and the employment of a corrosion-resistant fuel system. The difference in price from standard units ranges from $100 to $800.

Flexible-fuel vehicles (FFVs) offer consumers little advantage right now, because the high-alcohol fuels which they could employ are not generally available for purchase. This is because there are so few such vehicles that it doesn’t pay gas station owners to dedicate a pump to cater to them. Were FFVs made the standard, however, the fuel they need would quickly be made available everywhere.

If all cars sold in the U.S. had to be flexible-fueled, foreign manufacturers would also mass-produce such units, creating a large market in Europe and Asia as well as the U.S. for methanol and ethanol—much of which would be produced in America. Instead of being the world’s largest fuel importer, the United

States could become the world’s largest fuel exporter. A large portion of the money now going to Arabs and Iranians would instead go to the U.S.A. and Canada, with much of the rest going to Brazil and other tropical agricultural nations. This would reverse our trade deficit, improve conditions in the Third World, and cause a global shift in world economic power in favor of the West.

By promoting agriculture, FFVs also act as global cooling agents. Plants draw CO2 out of the atmosphere. They increase water evaporation, and the water vapor thus produced transports heat from the Earth’s surface to the upper atmosphere, where most of it is released to space.

The use of alcohol also reduces air pollution. In fact, environmental advantages were the motivation for the initial development of the first FFVs in California in the 1980s. During the era of $1.50 per gallon gasoline, gasohol pleased ecological activists, but it was economically disadvantageous. Recently, however, the comparative economics of alcohol fuels and gasoline have changed radically.

Methanol can also be used as the raw material to produce dimethyl ether, a completely clean-burning diesel fuel which could be used by trucks, locomotives, and ships. Many cars could also eventually use diesel. Diesel engines are substantially more efficient than traditional internal combustion engines, and equal to anything realistically possible from far more expensive, and as yet impractical, fuel cells.

THE ECONOMICS AND TECHNOLOGY HAVE ARRIVED—NOW FOR THE POLITICS

Two developments make a rapid transfer to high-alcohol fuels possible. One is the recent rise of gasoline prices, making methanol and ethanol economically attractive. The other is a technological innovation: the development by the Netherlands

Research Institute for Road Vehicles of a sensor capable of continuously measuring the alcohol content in mixed alcohol/gasoline fuel, and using this information to regulate the engine.

With this breakthrough, some 4.1 million vehicles were produced between 1998 and 2004 capable of handling various alcohol/ gasoline combinations. That is already five times the number of gasoline/electric hybrids on the road, and vastly increased use of such vehicles could happen overnight, for just a few hundred dollars extra per vehicle (compared to many thousands more for hybrids).

The only sticking point is the non-availability of high alcohol fuel mixes at the pump. Filling stations don’t want to dedicate space to a fuel mix used only by 1 percent of all cars. And consumers are not interested in buying vehicles for which the preferred fuel mix is unavailable.

This chicken-and-egg problem can be readily resolved by legislation. One major country has already done so. In 2003, Brazilian lawmakers mandated a transition to FFVs, with some tax incentives included to move things along. As a result, the Brazilian divisions of Fiat, Volkswagen, Ford, Renault, and GM all came out with ethanol FFV models in 2004, which took 60 percent of the country’s new vehicle sales that year. By 2007, 80 percent of all new vehicles sold in Brazil are expected to be FFVs, producing significant fuel savings to consumers, a boost to local agriculture, and a massive benefit to the country’s foreign trade balance.

ETHANOL OR METHANOL?

To date, all FFVs have been either methanol/gasoline designs or ethanol/gasoline designs. Combined methanol/ethanol/gasoline FFVs have not yet been produced. Their development poses only modest challenges, however. The question is, which alcohol would be the best one upon which to base our future alcohol-fuel economy?

Methanol is cheaper than ethanol. It can also be made from a broader variety of biomass material, as well as from coal and natural gas. And methanol is the safest motor fuel, because it is much less flammable than gasoline (a fact that has led to its adoption by car racing leagues).

On the other hand, ethanol is less chemically toxic than methanol, and it carries more energy per gallon. Ethanol contains about 75 percent of the energy of gasoline per gallon, compared to 67 percent for methanol. Both thus achieve fewer miles per gallon than gasoline, but about as many miles per dollar at current prices, and probably many more miles per dollar at future prices.

Methanol is more corrosive than ethanol. This can be dealt with by using appropriate materials in the automobile fuel system. A fuel system made acceptable for methanol use will also be fine for ethanol or pure gasoline.

Both ethanol and methanol are water soluble and biodegradable in the environment. The consequences of a spill of either would be much less than that of petroleum products. If the

Exxon Valdez had been carrying either of these fuels instead of oil, the environmental impact caused by its demise would have been negligible.

Ethanol is actually edible, whereas methanol is toxic when drunk. This difference, though, should not be overdrawn, since in an FFV economy, both would be mixed with gasoline. The breakdown products of both ethanol and methanol are much less noxious than those from petroleum, and both emit far fewer particulates when burned. Methanol, ethanol, and gasoline are about equal in the levels of nitrous oxide and carbon monoxide produced when they are burned. Since it is made exclusively from agricultural products, ethanol acts as counter to global warming. Methanol can as well, but only if its source is agricultural. Methanol produced from coal or natural gas has about the same impact on global warming as gasoline.

In short, either methanol or ethanol could be used very effectively, with roughly equal countervailing advantages. This has not stopped proponents of either fuel from vociferously arguing their unique advantage and pushing for FFVs based exclusively on their favored product. To date, the more effective faction in this debate has been the ethanol group, backed as it is by the powerful farm lobby.

Given this political support, and no decisive technical argument in favor of methanol, the question might well be asked: why not just go with the stronger side and implement an exclusively ethanol/ gasoline FFV economy? The answer has to do with the total resource base. If we want FFVs not merely to benefit farmers, but to make America energy independent, we need a larger production base than ethanol alone can deliver.

The United States uses 380 million gallons of gasoline a day. If we were to replace that entirely with ethanol we would have to harvest approximately four times as much agricultural output as we currently grow for food production. Now it is true that we don’t need to replace all of our gasoline, at least not in the short term. Replacing half would make us substantially energy independent. Furthermore, future processes might eventually wring out higher ethanol yields per acre. Surplus ethanol from Brazil or other tropical nations could also be imported. Nonetheless, relying on ethanol alone would require putting under fresh cultivation an amount of land greater than what we now use for food production. This would cause many strains.

So if we are to use alcohol fuels to achieve energy independence, a broader resource base is needed. This can be provided by methanol, which can come from both a broader array of biomass materials and also from coal and natural gas. Methanol production from coal is particularly important, since coal is America’s, and the world’s, cheapest and most prevalent energy resource. The United States could power its entire economy on coal for centuries, and large reserves also exist in allied countries. Current coal prices stand in the range of three cents a kilogram, much cheaper than agricultural products, so methanol can be made from coal at low cost. By mixing it at various rates with ethanol over time, we can increase supplies, reduce prices, maximize environmental benefits, and vastly increase the flexibility of our alcohol economy. Insisting that future vehicles have the capability to burn both alcohols is thus critical.

Even with methanol in the mix, the shifting of the world from a petroleum to an alcohol standard would remain a great boon to farmers. Third World farmers as much as American growers would enjoy the benefits—not only from a vastly increased market for their products, but also from the collapse of petroleum prices (which currently threaten crushing fertilizer and tractor fuel prices). This adds a strong humanitarian case for the transition to flexible fuels.

By providing Third World populations with an extensive source of income, the alcohol economy would also give them the wherewithal to buy manufactured products from developed nations. We would end up selling far more tractors, harvesters, and hybrid seeds to Africans, for instance. That would improve economic outcomes for all nations.

THE MEGA FIX FOR WHAT AILS US

Energy conservation offers only a strained strategy for enduring economic oppression with very slightly ameliorated pain. Today’s petroleum monopolists would still ultimately have us over a barrel. The ballyhooed hydrogen economy, meanwhile, is a hoax.

If we are to win the critical energy battle, there is only one way to do it. We must take ourselves, and the rest of the world, off the petroleum standard. Only by doing this can we destroy the economic power of our enemies at the very foundations. Only in this way can we transfer control of the future from those who take their wealth, pre-made, from the ground (and therefore have no need for education or freedom), to those who make their wealth through hard work, skill, and creativity (who thus must build free societies which maximize the human potential

of every citizen).

Our nation’s founders stipulated that the purpose of our government is to provide for our defense, promote our welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. In our current economic and military dilemma, decisive action for energy independence is one of the most dramatic steps we could take to achieve those ends. Congress should immediately require that all future vehicles sold in the U.S.A. be flexible-fueled, thereby launching us into an alcohol-energy future that holds promise like few other options within our grasp.

Dr. Robert Zubrin, president of the aerospace engineering and research firm Pioneer Astronautics, wrote The Case for Mars, and other books.

Alchemy project is opensourced

2007-03-08T19:43:00.000-08:00

The OpenAlchemy project is the opensourced version of Alchemy - the
user interface used on the Amida Simputer.

Now Alchemy has been opensourced, and the code is out there, under the
GPL. Several people have started actively working on it, including some
well known names outside India. There is a lot of work to be done, and if
you ever wanted to get involved with a FOSS project, this would be a good
way to start. And since the port going on is to the OPenEmbedded platform,
you would actually be involved with both projects.

If you are interested in contributing to the project (especially if you
are a student), go over to http://openalchemy.org, join the mailing list
(you will find some familiar people there already), read through the
archives, find out what needs doing - and go for it!

Atul

--
http://atulchitnis.com (Professional)
http://atulchitnis.net (Personal)

India a global power? Tall claim, says Pitroda

2007-01-07T23:07:00.000-08:00

Indrani Roy Mitra in New Delhi

anuary 08, 2007 11:49 IST
Mincing words is just not his cup of tea. Satyanarayan Gangaram aka Sam Pitroda is fond of calling spade a spade. Ask him if India is fast developing as a global power, and "Nah" comes the grimace.

"I don't understand how someone can make such an irresponsible statement," follows the rebuttal. Look at the garbage piled up on the roads, visit Indian towns and villages and just take a look at the sanitation problems. Do you know more than 60 per cent of the villages cannot provide safe drinking water to their population?"

In New Delhi to attend the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, Pitroda wears a disgruntled look whenever you talk about India's growth and the much-discussed 'progress' it has made.

"We, Indians, are a funny lot. We feel happy patting our backs for imaginary achievements. If there is a molehill, we instantly create a mountain out of it and start praising ourselves. It's a sad thing to do. I wish we were mature enough to accept the reality."

Talking to rediff.com, Pitroda thinks "Too much of tall talks are doing the rounds about India's development while too little is done. What we need to do is sit back and do a quick rethink."

The chairman of the National Knowledge Commission says a lot needs to be done to bring about (even) a knowledge revolution in India. As a primary pre-requisite to that "individuals should have the ability to receive and comprehend knowledge.

"As you must be aware, the (Knowledge) Commission has been entrusted with the task of looking at five key areas: Access to Knowledge; Knowledge Concepts; Knowledge Creation; Knowledge Application and Knowledge Services.

"No way can we deny that approximately 250 million adults in India are illiterate. Our target is to achieve functional literacy among at least 90 per cent of the population in the quickest time possible."

"If people ask for more knowledge, we need to provide them. The existing public libraries need to be revamped and better managed. They should be remodelled to grow up as centres of excellence," he says.

Indians, Pitroda thinks, "should have better access to web-based portals providing information on the basic necessities like water, agriculture, education, sanitation, health and other related issues."

The Knowledge Commission, he informs, has drafted a comprehensive policy, which will be presented to the government on January 12.

"It will focus on the aforesaid issues and will also provide easy-to-follow guidelines." Can't we get a sneak preview of the draft? "No," smiles Pitroda. "I suggest you wait till January 13. Trust me, it will be worth the wait."

Refusing to dwell on the oft-repeated issue of reservation, he is quick to put in that expansion of educational opportunities and facilities, not reservation, should be the key issue.

"In fact, I am against reservation in any field for that matter. Be it education, health, technology or telecom, I believe in people's participation. The idea of demystifying technology and using it to benefit the common man always excites me. Today, there is hardly any difference between telecom, television, broadband and computers - software and hardware. All of these areas are merging and it is the government's duty to make the people of this country a part of it."

Known as the telecom czar of India, Pitroda has no qualms in admitting, "The telecom cat has been let out of the bag and now the onus rests on the government to complete the task. There needs to be well-formulated policies and rulings to consolidate the current position of the Indian telecom industry. It is time we realised that telecom is as essential as water, agriculture, health and housing."

Story

Parrot's oratory stuns scientists

2007-01-01T21:11:00.000-08:00

By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent

Feathered prodigy: N'kisi leads the field

The finding of a parrot with an almost unparalleled power to communicate with people has brought scientists up short.

The bird, a captive African grey called N'kisi, has a vocabulary of 950 words, and shows signs of a sense of humour.

He invents his own words and phrases if he is confronted with novel ideas with which his existing repertoire cannot cope - just as a human child would do.

N'kisi's remarkable abilities feature in the latest BBC Wildlife Magazine.

N'kisi is believed to be one of the most advanced users of human language in the animal world.

About 100 words are needed for half of all reading in English, so if N'kisi could read he would be able to cope with a wide range of material.

Polished wordsmith

He uses words in context, with past, present and future tenses, and is often inventive.

One N'kisi-ism was "flied" for "flew", and another "pretty smell medicine" to describe the aromatherapy oils used by his owner, an artist based in New York.

When he first met Dr Jane Goodall, the renowned chimpanzee expert, after seeing her in a picture with apes, N'kisi said: "Got a chimp?"

School's in: He is a willing learner

He appears to fancy himself as a humourist. When another parrot hung upside down from its perch, he commented: "You got to put this bird on the camera."

Dr Goodall says N'kisi's verbal fireworks are an "outstanding example of interspecies communication".

In an experiment, the bird and his owner were put in separate rooms and filmed as the artist opened random envelopes containing picture cards.

Analysis showed the parrot had used appropriate keywords three times more often than would be likely by chance.

Captives' frustrations

This was despite the researchers discounting responses like "What ya doing on the phone?" when N'kisi saw a card of a man with a telephone, and "Can I give you a hug?" with one of a couple embracing.

Professor Donald Broom, of the University of Cambridge's School of Veterinary Medicine, said: "The more we look at the cognitive abilities of animals, the more advanced they appear, and the biggest leap of all has been with parrots."

Alison Hales, of the World Parrot Trust, told BBC News Online: "N'kisi's amazing vocabulary and sense of humour should make everyone who has a pet parrot consider whether they are meeting its needs.

"They may not be able to ask directly, but parrots are long-lived, and a bit of research now could mean an improved quality of life for years."

All images courtesy and copyright of Grace Roselli.

Story

Virgin Komodo prepares to give birth

2006-12-24T08:03:00.000-08:00

Chester, England: In an evolutionary twist, Flora, a Komodo dragon from a UK zoo has managed to become pregnant without any male help.

Other reptile species reproduce asexually in a process known as parthenogenesis. But Flora’s virginal conception and that of another Komodo dragon earlier this year at the London Zoo, are the first time it has been documented in a Komodo dragon.

Native to Indonesia, Komodos are the world’s largest predatory lizards.

The cases of Flora and the London lizard, Sungai, are described in a study published Thursday in Nature.

Parthenogenesis is a process in which eggs become embryos without male fertilisation. It has been seen in about 70 species, including snakes and lizards. Scientists are unsure whether female Komodo dragons have always had this latent ability to reproduce or if this is a new evolutionary development.

Having been raised in captivity, Flora has never been exposed to a male Komodo dragon.

Her keepers first became suspicious in May, when she laid 25 eggs.

Though it’s not uncommon for female dragons to lay eggs without mating, such eggs are not usually fertilised. When three of them collapsed, scientists took a closer look.

“We saw blood vessels and a small embryo,” said Kevin Buley, a reptile expert at Flora’s home at the Chester Zoo in the northern England town. “And we knew immediately that Flora had fertilised the eggs herself.”

They sent the collapsed eggs, along with tissue samples from Flora, Nessie, and a male Komodo dragon, to a laboratory that conducted genetic testing to determine the eggs’ parentage. Results showed that their DNA could not have come from any other dragon.

At the London Zoo, Sungai gave birth to four dragon hatchlings in April through self-fertilisation. After their births, Sungai went on to mate normally with a male dragon, producing another baby dragon.

In contrast, other lizard species that reproduce asexually cannot mate normally.

That might give Komodos a distinct survival edge. Experts are keen to find out how prevalent Komodo virgin births are in the wild.

“It’s baffling why a species starts doing this,” said Dr Kevin de Queiroz, a research zoologist at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington. “It would be helpful to know how often this happens and what the mechanism is that allows them do that.’’

Story

Thanks to Dr.Sangeeta Dhanuka

New Insect Order Found in Southern Africa

2006-12-19T21:17:00.000-08:00

Bijal P. Trivedi
National Geographic Today

March 28, 2002

For the first time in 87 years, researchers have discovered an insect that constitutes a new order of insects. Dubbed "the gladiator" (for the recent movie), it lives in the Brandberg Mountains of Namibia, on the west coast of Southern Africa.

Entomologist Oliver Zompro of the Max Planck Institute of Limnology in Plön, Germany, who identified the creature as unique, said it resembles "a cross between a stick insect, a mantid, and a grasshopper."

It differs from a stick insect, Zompro noted, because its first body segment is the largest. Unlike a mantid, it uses both its fore and mid legs to catch prey, and unlike a grasshopper, it can't jump.

Growing up to four centimeters (1.6 inches) long, "the gladiator" is carnivorous and nocturnal. It lives at the base of clumps of grass that grow in rock crevices.

Zompro first suspected that he was seeing a new insect order while examining fossils of stick-like insects sent to him by amber collectors in Germany. After finding similar specimens in more recent collections at museums in London and Berlin, he set out to determine whether the insect—which had been presumed extinct—might still be found in the wild.

The existence of the insect was confirmed last month on a field trip to Namibia.

The discovery of the new insect order, which has been named Mantophasmatodea, increases the number of insect orders to 31.

"This discovery is comparable to finding a mastodon or saber-toothed tiger," said Piotr Naskrecki, director of Conservation International's new Invertebrate Diversity Initiative.

Diana Wall, an ecologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, called the discovery "tremendously exciting" and said it could give scientists "a new perspective on how life fits together."

"This new order could be a missing link to determining relationships between insects and other groups," she said, adding: "Every textbook discussing the orders of insects will now need to be rewritten."

Lucky Break

No new order of insects has been identified since 1915.

Zompro said he got lucky. "So many zoologists all over the world have combed the Earth for new specimens in so many locations that the chance of finding a new order is close to zero," he said. Zompro, a specialist in stick insects, was studying a group of fossils sent to him by various collectors when he began to suspect he was seeing a new type of insect.

The oldest known specimen of the newly identified insect was encased in a 40-million-year-old chunk of golden amber.

Over a period of six months, Zompro received nearly two dozen specimens that led him to conclude he had discovered a new order, but one that he thought was now extinct. One amber nugget contained a perfectly preserved adult specimen. Another fossil had captured the insect in the cannibalistic act of eating another.

"It's a big insect and difficult to overlook. That's what is so amazing" about the finding, Zompro said.

New to Science

Pictured above is a new, as yet unnamed species that has been identified as belonging to a new order of insects. It lives atop the Brandberg Mountains in Namibia, dwelling in grasses that spring from rock crevices, and probably feeds mainly on spiders and small insects.

Photograph by Thomas Kujawski/ASA-Multimedia

Sifting through entomology collections at the British Museum of Natural History in London, he found an adult male insect from Tanzania that looked remarkably like the specimens entombed in amber. A few weeks later, he came upon a female specimen of the insect at Berlin's Museum of Natural History.

When Zompro dissected the specimen from the Berlin Museum, he found the remains of insects in its gut, indicating that the stick-like insect was a carnivore. All other known stick-like insects are plant eaters.

"At this point, I was sure that I had found an absolutely new order of insects," said Zompro.

Wilderness Search

Both of the insects Zompro observed in London and Berlin appeared related to the 40-million-year-old fossilized insect encased in amber. But the museum specimens had been collected during expeditions in the last century, suggesting that the insect was not extinct.

Zompro photographed the three specimens and sent the pictures to museums in Africa and South America, requesting information about any insects that appeared to be similar.

The National Museum of Namibia responded with a specimen that had been found in the Brandberg Mountains. It appeared to be from the same insect group.

Eugene Marais, the museum's curator of entomology, met with Zompro in Berlin and examined the original amber fossil. Based on their analysis, Zompro made plans to travel to Namibia to search for the insect.

Earlier this month, he joined an expedition to the Brandberg Mountains, jointly sponsored by Conservation International, the Max Planck Institute, and the National Museum of Namibia. The team consisted of 16 entomologists from Germany, England, South Africa, Namibia, and the United States.

The scientists were dropped onto a mountain peak in the remote area and began a painstaking search on the stony, arid summit. After a night of shaking grass bushes, a scientist looking for insects called silverfish found the first of the live insects that came to be known as "the gladiator."

During the trip, Zompro collected a dozen of the insects, which he carried back to his lab in Germany to study mating, feeding, and other forms of behavior in the insects. Aggressive tendencies became one area of interest—a couple of the insects apparently were eaten during the the trip back.

Zompro plans to return to Namibia to study the distribution of the insect in Namibia.

Naskrecki of Conservation International said Zompro's discovery is important because it "tells us that there are places on Earth that act as protective pockets, preserving tiny glimpses of what life was like millions of years ago."

The Namibian insects, he added, "are one of the last living witnesses of a time when America and Africa were still part of the same land mass. This order was thought to be extinct for 35 to 50 million years."

Story

Thanks to Vaz Viren

Sticky material to scale new heights

2006-12-11T03:43:00.000-08:00

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Climbing up walls like Spider-Man might not just be the stuff of comic books if a new material continues its successful development.

A team at a British aerospace and defense company have created a re-usable adhesive material that can stick to any surface, a small piece of which could easily support the weight of a small family car.

The team at BAE Systems Advanced Technology Center, led by Dr. Jeffrey Sargent and Dr. Sajad Haq, have been inspired by the gecko lizard and its ability to walk up walls and across ceilings.

Their "Synthetic Gecko" material mimics the microscopic hairs on a gecko's foot. Its potential as a reusable super-strong adhesive material could be applied across a number of areas.

"As well as the engineering potential of our product we realize there is a huge scope for its commercial and even medical application," Dr. Jeffery Sargent told CNN.

It's not the first time that material has been produced that has tried to copy geckos' climbing feats. Scientists at the University of California discovered the secrets of the lizard's seemingly gravity-defying ability in 2000.

Full Story

The Sanctuary-ABN AMRO Wildlife Awards 2006

2006-12-11T02:42:00.000-08:00

“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.” – Shawshank Redemption

Oft in the midst of noise and haste, one tends to forget that there is a battle going on, a quiet, stealthy battle waged against that which cannot speak in its own defence – Nature. Irreplaceable ecosystems are being lost, too many species are going extinct to keep a count, and others are at the brink of extinction… floods and droughts have become permanent ‘seasons’ across the globe. And in this face of aridity and hopelessness, we have Earth Heroes who give silent Nature a voice, while risking their lives everyday for us. That is what makes them out of the ordinary. They give us hope for a better tomorrow. For our children, and our children’s children… For this, we honour them.

Lifetime Service Award
Romulus Whitaker: American by birth and Indian at heart, Romulus Earl Whitaker is an inspirational figure who has made an invaluable contribution to wildlife research and nature conservation in India. He arrived as a young boy and did much of his schooling in Kodaikanal where he developed an affinity for the natural world by trekking through the forests of the Palni Hills. He moved back to the U.S. to complete his higher education and after a short stint with the U.S. Merchant Navy, joined the Miami Serpentarium where he learned about venom collection. He returned to India to fulfill his destiny as a world class herpetologist, founding the Snake Park in Guindy in Tamil Nadu and then the very popular Madras Crocodile Bank/Centre for Herpetology in Mahabalipuram, where crocodiles are bred in captivity with the objective of releasing them into the wild.

Wildlife Service Awards
Firoz Ahmed: Firoz Ahmed is a prolific field biologist whose experience belies his 31 years. Wildlife conservation is at the centre of his life’s purpose. He is an Honorary Wildlife Warden in his home state of Assam. He currently works as a wildlife biologist and environment educator with Aaranyak, in Assam. Ahmed has documented the herpetofauna of the Kaziranga National Park, Orang National Park and a number of community forests in Nagaland and Meghalaya. He also studied the endangered Dark-rumped Swift in Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland.

Praveen Bhargav: Praveen Bhargav, an accomplished wildlifer, has been at the cutting edge of strategic conservation and research in Karnataka since 1979. A passionate advocate for wildlife, he was born in Gwalior, but has spent most of his life in Bangalore. He co-founded Wildlife First, a Bangalore-based advocacy group that helped convince the Supreme Court to wind up the destructive open-cast mining by the Kudremukh Iron Ore Company Limited (KIOCL) in the Western Ghats. This has directly benefitted a number
of endangered species including the endemic lion-tailed macaque. It has also freed the exquisite Bhadra river
from toxic contaminants routinely released by
mining companies.

Dr. Dharmendra Khandal: He is one of the country’s few spider experts, a botanist and field researcher who works with tigers. Employed by Tiger Watch, an NGO founded by Fateh Singh Rathore in Ranthambhore, he is internally driven to protect Rajasthan’s wildlife. His most passionate involvement today is the setting up of an anti-poaching information network in Rajasthan. With colleagues, he has been responsible for several wildlife contraband seizures that have resulted in the arrest of poachers. A conservationist at heart, he is now searching for ways to reform and rehabilitate the families of the dangerous Mogiya tribal poachers.

The Sundarbans Protection Team: The largest delta in the world, the Sundarbans is a hostile land and patrolling it is a Herculean task. But the Sundarbans Tiger Reserve Protection Team, led by their Field Director Pradeep Vyas, has displayed creativity, determination and courage and has brought uncompromising dedication to the task on hand. Their dream is to see a day when the tiger and all species that share its world are truly safe.

Nikhil Padmakar Desai: One of India’s least known, but most effective field-based conservationists, Nitin Desai is Director, Central India with the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI). His association with wildlife issues began in 1987 as a volunteer for WWF’s nature camps. Disturbed by the impact of poaching and the wildlife trade between 1998 and 1999, he worked on a collaborative data gathering project to clamp down on the illegal wildlife trade.

Green Teacher Award
Nishikant Vasudeo Kale and Prakash Muralidhar Laddha: They work as a team, and their mission is to create a veritable army of young Indians who grow up to respect the Earth. They use the tiger as a symbol for the protection of all wild plants and animals, with the Melghat Tiger Reserve and the Satpura region as their living canvas.Both Prof. Kale and Prakash Laddha are models that good educationists should try to emulate. They are successfully passing the green baton on to generations, even as they fight to protect their vanishing natural heritage.

Young Naturalist Awards
Bajrang Bishnoi: If this is the face of tomorrow, India has a great green future. He is one of the principal members of a flying squad of Bishnois who are prepared to chase, capture and restrain anyone who dares to poach animals in the vicinity of their villages in Rajasthan. Bajrang belongs to a remote tribal community that has contributed more to wildlife protection than almost any other urban or rural society in India. The Bishnois of Rajasthan are best known for their culture of animal reverence and protection. Young Bajrang Bishnoi follows the footsteps of his elders for whom the teachings of Jambaji, or Jambeshwar Bhagavan guide their every living moment.

Hakabhai Makawana: Young people are understandably attracted to tigers, lions, elephants and rhinos. Hakabhai’s life is governed by less charismatic creatures – vultures. When the Gir Nature Youth Club and the Flamingo Nature Club approached the padavalas (labourers who collect coconuts by climbing trees) of Bhavnagar’s Mahuva District for help with their “Save the Vulture” campaign, Hakabhai a young boy responded instantly.He is now an effective ambassador for vultures, explaining their ecological role to other padavalas who now protect the nests they might once have destroyed.

Sameer I. Kehimkar: He is a snake rescuer who is fast becoming recognised as a crack herpetologist. Sameer Kehimkar is 23 years old and is happiest in the company of the kind of creepy-crawlies that other young persons shun. Snake rescues came naturally to Sameer from his childhood in Navi Mumbai where people often called him to help with snakes that had entered homes and offices. He is already a caecilian and amphibian expert and has helped conduct surveys in Arunachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Wind Under The Wings Award
NDTV, Delhi
NDTV is best known for the high standards it has set for television reporting in the arena of politics, business, sports and entertainment. Yet, one NDTV programme has consistently managed to hold its own in the rough and tumble world of commerce by creating a loyal viewership numbering millions of Indians, young and old – Born Wild.

Story

Satellites to keep track on turtles

2006-12-08T01:34:00.000-08:00

Statesman News Service

KENDRAPARA, Nov. 30: Stung by conservationists’ criticism that oil exploration along the Orissa coast will adversely affect the marine ecology, the state forest department and Wildlife Institute of India have joined hands to closely monitor the path of one million of Olive Ridley sea turtles, visiting the Gahirmatha coast from January to March every year, through satellite telemetry tracking technology.

Turtle experts have the view that it is imprudent to allow offshore oil drilling in the sea perilously close to the maximum turtle concentration zones.

The novel satellite study on these threatened species, the itinerant path of which has largely remained unexplored, would start once the turtles start arriving at the Gahirmatha nesting ground to lay eggs, according to officials.

About 70 turtles will be handpicked for experiment with satellite telemetry application. After fitted with telemetry, they would be released in the wild. Its track and path of movement would be minutely observed by WII scientists, said the Bhitarkanika forest officials.

The divisional forest officer, Bhitarkanika forest (mangrove) division, Mr Ajay Kumar Jena, said the satellite application on turtles would start shortly under the stewardship of scientists of Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun. He refused to elaborate on.

Though the experiment to track the turtles’ itinerant path through satellite telemetry technique had earlier been conducted in 2001, it was not a great success. Four female turtles fitted with satellite transmitters and released in the wild near the Devi river mouth nesting ground hardly moved long distance and were sighted roaming along the Bay of Bengal coast. The telemetry fitted then had reportedly developed technical snags and as a result these species are learnt to have gone out of sight.

While one of the turtle advanced up to Jaffna off Sri Lankan coast, two others roamed on the Bay of Bengal coast before making their annual journey to Orissa coast for mass nesting. The latest satellite tracking experiment on turtles would commence during early 2007 after turtles make their annual rendezvous to Gahirmatha rookery for mass nesting, officials of Bhitarkanika national park said.

The Union government has accorded nod to oil exploration work by corporate giant Reliance Industries and Oil and Natural Gas Commission along the Mahanadi river basis area.
After the conservationists raised voice, the environment ministry had directed the RIL to stop oil drilling during the nesting season.

Of the two midsea blocks, where RIL has taken to oil exploration reserve, one of the blocks is right on the return path of these migratory species who travel long distances to nest along the Gahirmatha coast.

The satellite telemetry tracking of these species was given a serious thought to scientifically establish whether the oil drilling block is swarmed by breeding turtles. The satellite study will also examine the impact of human interference on the turtles and other marine species.

The oil exploring companies had contended that the turtle congregation areas thrived on the near shore which is 10 nautical miles off the coast. The offshore drilling beyond 50 nautical miles will not affect the turtles, the oil companies had maintained citing similar explorations in the USA and Gulf of Mexico.

The satellite tracking being done this time is in accordance with recommendation of Multi-disciplinary Expert Group (MEG) constituted by the Union forest and environment ministry, said officials of the state forest department.

Story

Vietnam protects sea turtles by satellite

2006-12-07T20:28:00.000-08:00

09:51' 21/11/2006 (GMT+7)

VietNamNet Bridge - Three blue turtles on Con Dao Island have been affixed with special equipment which can send signals to satellites, which can help scientists follow the movements of the turtles.

“After one month, the equipment still works well. Watching the movements of the turtles by satellite has exceeded our expectations,” said Le Xuan Ai, Director of the Con Dao National Park.

The park is the first place in Vietnam keeping track of wild animals by satellite.

Con Dao is considered the most important place for sea turtles to lay eggs in Vietnam. Following turtles by satellite will provide significant information to managers and preservers to protect this kind of animal.

For the past ten years, sea turtles have been protected on Con Dao Island and tens of thousands of baby turtles are set free annually.

The programme to protect the egg laying sites of sea turtles on Con Dao Island has been quite successful, but many turtles still die when they come to the egg delivery sites because of being caught in nets, etc.

Following sea turtles by satellite will be combined with a master plan to protect the Con Dao sea area and coastal area under a project of the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP), sponsored by the Global Environment Fund and the Danish International Development Agency (Danida).

An education programme on sea turtle protection will be carried out at schools on Con Dao island, including a contest to name and keep track of sea turtles.

Kieu Minh

Story

City birds raise their tempo

2006-12-05T20:23:00.000-08:00

Published online: 4 December 2006; | doi:10.1038/news061204-1

Birds change their tune to be heard over traffic.

Narelle Towie

Birds sing fast and high in London, but slower in the Kolin forest of the Czech Republic.

AlamyIt seems life really is faster in the city — even for birds.

Researchers have found that birds living in urban areas sing a faster tune than their slower country counterparts. The changes in birdsong may help their calls to be heard over the howl of traffic and the wind.

The songs of great tits (Parus major) living in ten major European cities were compared with the tunes from those living in nearby forest. All of the city slickers were found to make shorter, faster and more high-pitched sounds, researchers report in Current Biology¹.

"Quick, repetitious trills pass better through high wind and the low frequencies of traffic noise," explains Hans Slabbekoorn from Leiden University in the Netherlands. "Whereas low, slower sounds transmit better through dense vegetation."

Changing one's tune to be heard over background noise is not a new phenomenon. Urban nightingales (Luscinia megarhynchos) have been shown to up their volume when the going gets loud. And birds that live near the crash of a waterfall have a higher frequency call than those residing in quieter woodland.

Slabbekoorn's team previously showed that great tits in the city of Leiden had different tunes depending on whether they lived in quiet or bustling areas. That work prompted him to see whether city and country birds were different.

Sound survival

The ability of the male great tit to adapt his repertoire can make a big difference to his life: male birds use sound to defend their territory and to attract females.

"If the birds still used low-frequency sounds in the city, they would lose the ability to communicate," explains Slabbekoorn. "Leaving out lower frequencies seems critical to the bird's ability to thrive."

The expansion of urban landscape makes this area of research important, say scientists. Particularly since it seems that not all birds are so flexible about changing their tune. Zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata), for example, crystallize their melody in their first months, and so would not be expected to adapt to a new soundscape later in life.

"We have very limited data on all the different species," says Slabbekoorn, about both their ability to adapt their song and their capacity to have stuck it out in the city so far. "We need to know which species have already disappeared from urban areas."

With more information on which birds are sensitive to noise, Slabbekoorn thinks it should be easier to predict some of the consequences of putting roads through nature areas.

References

Slabbekoorn H., Boer-Visser A., . Current Biology, 16 . 2326 - 2331 (2006)

Story

Researchers teach computers how to name images by 'thinking'

2006-11-05T23:35:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, November 1, 2006

University Park, Pa. -- Penn State researchers have "taught" computers how to interpret images using a vocabulary of up to 330 English words, so that a computer can describe a photograph of two polo players, for instance, as "sport," "people," "horse," "polo."

The new system, which can automatically annotate entire online collections of photographs as they are uploaded, means significant time-savings for the millions of Internet users who now manually tag or identify their images. It also facilitates retrieval of images through the use of search terms, said James Wang, associate professor in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, and one of the technology's two inventors.

The system is described in a paper, "Real-Time Computerized Annotation of Pictures," given at the recent ACM Multimedia 2006 conference in Santa Barbara, Calif., and authored by Jia Li, associate professor, Department of Statistics, and Wang. Penn State has filed a provisional patent application on the invention.

Major search engines currently rely upon uploaded tags of text to describe images. While many collections are annotated, many are not. The result: Images without text tags are not accessible to Web searchers. Because it provides text tags, the ALIPR system -- Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures-Real Time -- makes those images visible to Web users.

ALIPR does this by analyzing the pixel content of images and comparing that against a stored knowledge base of the pixel content of tens of thousands of image examples. The computer then suggests a list of 15 possible annotations or words for the image.

"By inputting tens of thousands of images, we have trained computers to recognize certain objects and concepts and automatically annotate those new or unseen images," Wang said. "More than half the time, the computer's first tag out of the top 15 tags is correct."

In addition, for 98 percent of images tested, the system has provided at least one correct annotation in the top 15 selected words. The system, which completes the annotation in about 1.4 seconds, also can be applied to other domains such as art collections, satellite imaging and pathology slides, Wang said.

The new system builds on the authors' previous invention, ALIP, which also analyzes image content. But unlike ALIP which characterized images by incorporating computational-intensive spatial modeling, ALIPR characterizes images by modeling distributions of color and texture.

The researchers acknowledge computers trained with their algorithms have difficulties when photos are fuzzy or have low contrast or resolution; when objects are shown only partially; and when the angle used by the photographer presents an image in a way that is different than how the computer was trained on the object. Adding more training images as well as improving the training process may reduce these limitations -- future areas of research.

A demonstration of the ALIPR system can be found at http://www.alipr.com online.

In a companion paper also presented at the ACM conference, the researchers describe another of their systems-one that can use annotations in a retrieval process. This new system leverages annotations from different sources, human and computer. The researchers, who have built a prototype of the system, are working on testing it in real-world situations. That paper, "Toward Bridging the Annotation-Retrieval Gap in Image Search by a Generative Modeling Approach," was authored by Ritendra Datta and Weina Ge, Ph.D. students in computer science and engineering; Li; and Wang.

"Our approach aims at making all pictures on the Internet visible to the users of search engines," Wang said.

Research on both systems was supported by the National Science Foundation.

Referance

Premji warns against perils of joblessness

2006-10-26T22:18:00.000-07:00

Suman Guha Mozumder in New York

October 26, 2006

Wipro Chairman Azim Premji warned on Tuesday that people in India could become vocal and aggressive in future unless jobs are created for millions.
Photograph: Paresh Gandhi

"If you do not create jobs for people who are getting more educated -- something which is becoming an important family priority -- one could get a very large percentage of people coming off the workforce without an opportunity. That could be a source of frustration because people would be more vocal and more aggressive," Premji said in response to a question about the risks faced by India as well as Wipro in future despite the growth.

"The aspiration level of people (in India) is going up thanks to the electronic media and people can see the contrasts in the lifestyles of people. I think that could generate a fair amount of resentment among the have-nots unless they are satisfied through job opportunities," Premji said.

Premji, India's second richest man, was speaking at a reception held in his honour by the South Asian Journalists Association and the Tamarind Art Gallery in Manhattan, New York.

The reception saw the launch of Bangalore Tiger, a book by Steve Hamm, a senior writer and software editor at BusinessWeek, on Wipro's key principles of transnational business model and how it is rewriting the rules of global competition. Hamm was present at the occasion.

During his 40-minute interaction with the 100-odd members of the audience comprising investors, software consultants, journalists and diplomats, Premji regaled the audience with elfish humour and candid replies to incisive questions on Wipro, India and its rural poverty.

To a question how he felt being rated one of India's richest men, the founder of Wipro said his company is yet to be the number one.

"We are not number one any more. There is a lot of competition. In a way, it is good because it gives us more opportunities to stretch our company," he said in a light vein.

To another question, he said as far as the risks for Wipro are concerned, it is the liberalisation concept of the West, particularly of the United States.

"I have come to the conclusion that the West is a big believer in liberalisation as long as it does not affect them," Premji said amid laughter.

On a serious note, however, he said as far as liberalisation in the West is concerned, it is a one-way traffic.

"I think if the West gets into protectiveness, particularly as the US is being with visa restrictions, it will get reciprocity of dealings from the Indian government," he said.

"The Indian government is learning or beginning to learn from the Chinese government that if you give with one hand, at least take back with one hand, (if not) like the Chinese government which takes back with two hands," he said.

"This is a negative trend that is happening."

Premji, who, true to his description as a frugal man, arrived at the venue in midtown Manhattan in a yellow-cab, threw light on the issue of India's rural poverty and whether liberalisation could bail the poor people out or not.

Noting that India is in a situation where 40 per cent of its agricultural and vegetable produces are lost because of lack of adequate food processing, he said the Indian leadership is going to create a huge amount of income and wealth in rural areas.

"I do not think liberalisation has increased poverty; it has reduced it. You can see that in cities, towns and villages," he said.

"I am optimistic that India's wealth creation will be significantly different 10 years from what it is today," he said.

Among others present at the event included Shashi Tharoor, United Nations under-secretary general who ran unsuccessfully as India's nominee for the post of UN Secretary General; Jayant Prasad, India's ambassador and permanent representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva; and noted New York-based painter Natvar Bhabsar.

Story

Steve Irwin

2006-09-05T02:18:00.000-07:00

Australian naturalist and television personality Steve Irwin has been killed by a stingray during a diving expedition off the Australian coast.

Mr Irwin, 44, died after being struck in the chest by the stingray's barb while he was filming a documentary in Queensland's Great Barrier Reef.

Paramedics from Cairns rushed to the scene but were unable to save him.

Mr Irwin was known for his television show The Crocodile Hunter and his work with native Australian wildlife.

Frankly speaking I am not a great fan of Steve Irwin, but I always have high regards for this guy for his daring attitude, love for wildlife and the way he made it popular among masses.

BBC News

My Top 5 Steve Irwin moments

Steve Irwin : In pictures

Google Spreadsheets

2006-08-07T03:20:00.000-07:00

Google has another cool tool for us. Google Spreadsheets

We can creat spreadsheets online. Download them as .xls or .csv Share it with people for either view or online updates. It really looks promissing.

Check it out But you need to have a google account for that.

Sony GPS tracker for photography

2006-08-02T22:08:00.000-07:00

Sony has today announced a very interesting little device for recording the position where photographs are taken. The GPS-CS1 is a small (9 cm / 3.5 in) cylindrical device which you simply attach to a backback or belt loop and carry with you while you shoot, it records your GPS location and this information can later be synchronized with your digital images to provide a map of where your photos were taken. We assume it does this using date and time information stored in the image header (which obviously requires your camera's clock to be synchronized). Interestingly the mapping solution is an online website with maps provided by Google Maps (it appears that the synchronization software will write the GPS location into JPEG EXIF headers).

Story

Join the Firefox User Panel!

2006-08-01T21:49:00.000-07:00

HEre is an message from Firefox team.

We're now recruiting for the Firefox User Panel! This program will uncover how people interact with the Web through a series of short surveys. We’re looking for panelists from all walks of life and skill sets to participate – from students to retirees, from power users to novice users, and even people who don't use Firefox.

We'll start developing the user panel immediately so encourage your friends, family, co-workers or anyone that browses the Web to participate soon! It's quick, easy and will help our efforts to build the world’s greatest browser.

I’m looking forward to working with you!

http://userpanel.mozilla.com

I am alread part of of it.

Firefox 200 Million Downloads

2006-08-01T21:36:00.000-07:00

foss.in/2006 the countdown begins

2006-07-31T03:32:00.000-07:00

The dats for foss.in 2006 India's largest FOSS Event are out and also the venue. The venue is gong to be J.N.Tata Auditorium, IISc Bangalore, India and the dates are November 24-26, 2006. See you there

Canon WWF Photo Contest 2006

2006-07-14T07:00:00.000-07:00

Canon and WWF join hands to save the splash for the future!

Canon and WWF highlight the issue of depleting freshwater resourcs through a unique photo contest. If you have an interesting picture that captures WATER send it to us and win exiciting prizes.

Theme: Water
Contest closes on 31st July 2006
Number of entries per participant : Two
Eligibility Criterion :18 years and above

Contest Home Page

Find Out Who You Are: One or Zero

2006-07-10T21:48:00.000-07:00

Mangesh Sakharam Ghogre

The following is a conversation between a computer geek and a spiritual guru: Computer Geek: What is spirituality? Guru: Spirituality essentially teaches that all beings are one. It reiterates Universal Oneness.

CG: What does that mean? Guru: It means that animals and all other non-human creatures are as good as human beings. The Sanskrit phrase, 'vasudhaiva kutumbakam', which belies the basic spiritual concept, implies that the whole universe is my family and that all beings are One.

Spirituality, therefore, teaches us to be humble and to not feign arrogance arising out of power or intellect. CG: But if all beings are One, where does God fit in?

Guru: After listening to various spiri-tual gurus and reading myriad literature, one may realise that God, the Supreme Being, is essentially a state of zero, or the state in which one has zero desires.

CG: Spiritually speaking, what should be the ultimate aim of my life? Guru: Spiritually, the ultimate aim of a human being's life is to transform himself from a state of one to that of zero. CG: How is religiosity dif-ferent from spirituality?

Guru: Religiosity, on the other hand, describes human beings as zero. Listen to the religious discourses and you shall often hear "Hum sab us parmatma ke ansh hain" — We are, every one of us, nothing but a minuscule part of God.

In plain English, it means, without God, one is nothing or zero. CG: Like spirituality, does religiosity also treat all creatures the same? Guru: While religiosity preaches tolerance and respect towards all creatures, human beings are considered superior to other creatures.

Some religious scriptures also claim that a human being is the most beautiful creation of God. CG: But if all beings are zero, where does God fit in religiosity? Guru: Religiosity preaches that God, a higher being, is the state of Oneness — where all is one and the same.

Remember, Sai Baba said, "Sabka malik ek" — God is One. CG: So, religiously speaking, what is the final aim of my life? Guru: Religiosity preaches that the ultimate aim of a human being's life is to transform from a state of zero to that of one.

CG: Thanks. You cleared my confusion. Guru: So, what do you consider yourself to be: spiritual or religious? CG: [Scratches his head] Will Google answer this question? Guru: Good God, it doesn't.

Else, I will be out of job. CG: My "brain disk" has crashed. Could you help me? Guru: Sure. Just ask yourself: Do you consider yourself one or zero? CG: I am a bit of both — one and zero.

Guru: Well, that means you are 10, which is the binary code for 2, and that is the dwandwa or duality of this world! CG: I don't understand what is dwandwa or duality.

Guru: It means that this world needs both one and zero, signifying that opposites coexist. We need spirituality and religiosity, only when one and zero come together they make the world a beautiful place. In essence, the world is nothing but a manifestation of various combinations of zero and one.

http://spirituality.indiatimes.com

Auto Rickshaws in Britain

2006-07-09T23:33:00.000-07:00

Hold on for dear life . . . the tuk-tuk has arrived

LIKE many backpackers who have whizzed around gridlocked Asian cities in tuk-tuks, Dominic Ponniah wondered whether the motorised rickshaws could be the solution for Britain’s congested streets.

Twelve tuk-tuks imported from India will operate in Brighton. Similiar services are planned for Central London and other cities. Photo: Gil Allen

The three-wheeled mopeds, named after the sound of the stuttering two-stroke engines used in early versions, are notorious for weaving at death-defying speeds through narrow gaps in the traffic. With the wind in your face and the accompanying sense of vulnerability, the top speed of 35mph feels like twice that.

Despite their poor reputation for safety, Mr Ponniah, 26, became convinced that tuk-tuks would catch on in Britain, especially if he added a few reassuring features such as roll bars, side-impact protection and seatbelts.

He has imported 12 from Pune in India and today begins Britain’s first tuk-tuk service in Brighton. A service for Central London is planned for next year, followed by others in Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh.

In Brighton, adults will pay a flat fare of £2.50 and children £1.50. They will share the ride with strangers, with up to three people squeezed into the open-sided cabin behind the driver. The service will run all year on a set route. Mr Ponniah is confident that there will still be a demand in winter, when the only protection from the cold and rain will be a plastic curtain.

The drivers, who have licences to drive cars, have had four days of training in driving and repairing a tuk-tuk. In Bangkok, Delhi and Bombay, it is common to see drivers tinkering with the engine while passengers wait.

In Asia, drivers rely on religious artefacts to protect them from crashes. Mr Ponniah, however, has had to satisfy the requirements of the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, which has tested each tuk-tuk.

Unlike the older, noisier versions in Asia, which run on petrol, the Brighton tuk-tuks have been converted to run on compressed natural gas. Mr Ponniah said that emissions of air pollutants were at least 90 per cent lower than for cars.

Achieving the equivalent of 50 miles per gallon, the tuk-tuks will be among the most fuel-efficient vehicles on the road. “They are as cheap as a bus and as convenient as a taxi. We will also make sure our drivers don’t drive like maniacs,” Mr Ponniah said.

Steve Webb, owner of the Tukshop in Southampton, which sells tuk-tuks as delivery vehicles, said: “You wouldn’t want to be in a collision with a Range Rover, but feeling a bit unprotected adds to the thrill. Riding in a tuk-tuk always puts a smile on people’s faces, especially if it reminds them of an Asian holiday.”

But Bob Oddy, of the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, said: “They can tip over and people can get thrown out. They should not be allowed to mix with other traffic.”

HOT STUFF

# Their official name is auto rickshaws or Bajajs

# They are low geared and have a high power-to- weight ratio

# A tuk-tuk features in a car chase in the 1983 James Bond Octopussy

# Curry houses in Glasgow, Swansea, Luton, Torquay and Southampton use them as delivery vehicles

# Tuk-tuks in India can carry 20 schoolchildren

Story

Nikon Photo Contest International 2006-2007

2006-07-04T21:48:00.000-07:00

Nikon has announced its "Nikon Photo Contest International 2006-2007". The theme of the photography contest is "At the heart of the image". There is no entry fee and some very attractive prizes to win! Entries are accepted from September 1 to November 30, 2006.

This year's theme: "At the heart of the image"

For more information, visit... Contest Page

Photographer urges no-photo day

2006-07-04T21:34:00.000-07:00

A photographer from Brighton in southern England is urging the people of the world to take a day out and stop taking pictures.

Becca Bland has launched "non-photography day" - planned for 17 July - through a website together with a sticker and flyposter campaign in various cities in England.

Ms Bland told BBC World Service's Culture Shock programme that the idea has "gone global" with interest in Manchester, Leeds, London and Brighton, and even further afield in Australia and Japan.

She explained that she wanted people to "put your camera down and appreciate the moment you are in".

"Experience life in an unmediated fashion, without anything in front of your eyes. Live in the moment," she added.

'Celebrate, don't document'

Ms Bland got the idea for the day after reading various works about far-eastern Zen Buddhism.

She explained that she believes that in taking a photograph, people are trying to take possession of a place - but that photographs cannot give an "essence" of that particular place.

The sticker campaign for the day has the message "celebrate the moment, don't document it".

"When you simply take photos of something, without fully engaging with it, you're assuming that all you can have and take is the actual appearance of a place - rather than other creative factors that exist in the place," Ms Bland said.

She added that a lot of people think that photographers concentrate on a small part of a place, in the belief that this can allow the detail to be better understood

"For my beliefs - and for Zen beliefs - it is the essence, the whole that is more important," she added.

"I think that's perhaps where photography does fall down - they've got that frame around it, and it's got this inability to capture the whole.

"Those things become signs and represent things, but they can never really be what the place is."

Camera culture

She added that people really committed to the idea could join the "non-photography police" - a group who are telling people about the day when they see them taking pictures on the street.

However, David Rowan, of the Trendsurfing column in British newspaper The Times, said he believes Ms Bland is "fighting a losing battle."

"There is also a 'buy-nothing' day, organised by anti-consumer lobbyists, and I still see shops pretty full the rest of the time," he said.

"There's an organisation called White Dot which tries to get us to switch off our TV for a day a year, and I still see the TV companies in business."

He added that while he thought it right to question the "culture of ubiquitous cameras," it is simply the way that technological developments have led to.

He pointed out that Microsoft is currently developing a project called My Life Bits, based on the idea of infinite storage space. By wearing goggles with a camera and microphone attached, the wearer can record and document everything they see and hear.

"If Becca wanted to be really popular in Britain, she would get closed circuit TV cameras switched off for a day, so they wouldn't be recording your car registration and they wouldn't be following you round the streets," he added.

Story

How Digital Cameras Work

2006-06-21T02:39:00.000-07:00

From light to bits, here's how digital cameras do the conversion.

http://www.bythom.com/ccds.htm

What’s the fuss over FOSS?

2006-06-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

IN an industry where acronyms are de rigueur, it seemed inevitable that an old computing concept would get a new name.

Last November at the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (which goes by its own unwieldy acronym WSIS), FOSS was on everyone’s lips as a way of bridging the divide between technology haves and have-nots.

FOSS stands for “free or open source software,” and it’s increasingly seen as the answer to everything from piracy to the lack of computing resources in Third World countries.

Free software that just anyone can copy or download over the Internet? What a crazy concept! Would businesses want to use software that nobody sold or supported?

The surprising answer is, many of them already do—without knowing it.

Indirectly, anyone who sends e-mail or browses the Web is using free and open source software because that is what powers most of the Internet.

In June 2006, more than six of 10 Web sites were on servers using Apache HTTP Server, an open source program running on Linux, which is also open source. That means if a company has a Web site, chances are good that it’s hosted on an open source system.

Anyone using Firefox (186 million downloads as of this month) to surf the Internet is also using open source software.

Despite these success stories, few people understand why or how free software works.

The concept of free software isn’t all that new. In fact, before software became a commodity, Unix hackers in universities would routinely share their source code—human-readable instructions—with each other, copying and adapting them freely. Programmers expected to be paid for their work, not for the programs themselves.

Out of this environment came Richard Stallman, a programmer at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Stallman valued this collegial approach and argued that software users should have the freedom to share programs with others and be able to study and make changes to the software that they used. Restricting these freedoms, he believed, would hurt the larger community by limiting the benefits that the software could bring.

Dissatisfied by the limits that companies were putting on software, including Unix, he set out in 1983 to create a free operating system that he called GNU—a recursive acronym for Gnu’s Not Unix— and invited other programmers to help. In 1985, he created the Free Software Foundation to support the development of free software.

Out of these efforts came a complete set of programming tools but the core of the operating system—called the kernel—proved difficult to complete.

Into this gap stepped Linus Torvalds, a student at the University of Helsinki. In 1991, Torvalds released a kernel that used libraries and tools developed by the GNU project and released it on the Internet, inviting feedback and help from other programmers. Remarkably, developers from all over the world responded and helped Torvalds create and refine his free operating system.

Today, Linux and other free or open source programs have made significant inroads in a world accustomed to proprietary software.

“The Codebreakers,” a BBC documentary in May 2006, shows how different countries have used FOSS to narrow the digital divide. These include school projects in Namibia, Spain and India, computer kiosks in South Africa, a disaster management system in Sri Lanka, and an environmental database system for the Galapagos.

One of the most high-profile efforts, however, is Brazil’s program to support the use and development of free and open source software in its government offices. The move saves Brazil $150 million a year in software licensing costs, which means more money to buy computer hardware for technologically deprived areas.

Nobody expects FOSS to replace proprietary software soon, but given the substantial savings and benefits it would bring, shouldn’t the Philippine government take a closer look?

Column archives and blog at: http://www.chinwong.com

Story

Early web-spinner found in amber

2006-06-20T00:37:00.000-07:00

Spiral orb webs, which to many people typify spiders, were catching insects in their sticky silk while the dinosaurs still walked the Earth.

True orb weaving spiders found trapped in amber from 121-115 million years ago are the oldest of their type yet found.

The orb-weavers are a diverse spider group

The spiral webs have proven an extremely successful strategy for catching prey - evidenced by the great diversity of orb weavers present today.

Two specimens are described in the UK Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

The fossil spiders were found embedded in amber from Alava in northern Spain. They date to the Lower Cretaceous.

Silky skills

Amber is a form of protective resin extruded from trees that has hardened over millions of years. It is very useful to scientists studying the history of past life because ancient animals and plants are often preserved in the gem-like material.

David Penney of the University of Manchester, UK, and Vicente Ortuno of the University of Alcala, Spain, assign the arachnids to a new species: Mesozygiella dunlopi.

Typical orb webs consist of outer frame lines to which radial (spoke-like) lines are attached, providing support for the characteristic spiral sticky line that occupies most of the web's surface.

Orb webs are a common sight in the garden
By using two different types of silk - one strong and rigid, the other weaker but stretchy - the orb weaver creates a web with the required strength and flexibility to cope with the impact of fast-flying insects - and the struggling which occurs once the prey is captured in the sticky trap.

Web of intrigue

The evolutionary success of this design can be seen in the high diversity of true orb weavers, which currently number 2,847 living species.

This astonishing diversity also owes much to the way in which the basic design can be easily modified.

"One modification to the web is quite fantastic," Dr Penney told the BBC News website.

"Picture a normal, spiral orb web and picture running down from it a ladder-type structure which is also made from sticky silk. This has evolved to trap moths, which have scales that rub off.

"When a moth flies into a normal orb web, it's the scales that stick and the moth tumbles out of it. But with the ladder structure, the moth tumbles down until all the scales come off and eventually it gets caught."

Diverse group

In Biology Letters, Penney and Ortuno write that spiders may have expanded in number and diversity during the Cretaceous.

An explosion in the abundance of flowering plants begot an expansion of the insects which pollinated them. These in turn provided prey for the spiders, the authors suggest, which prospered as a result.

There are fossil spiders that date from the Devonian (350-420 million years ago) - long before even the dinosaurs.

In some of these mineral fossils, it is possible to see evidence of spinnerets, the organs spiders use to spin their web silk.

But it is often unclear how fossil spiders used them; some species spin web silk to line their burrows and to protect egg sacs.

Story

Super Battery

2006-06-19T23:15:00.000-07:00

Ever wish you could charge your cellphone or laptop in a few seconds rather than hours? As this ScienCentral News video explains, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing a battery that could do just that, and also might never need to be replaced.

The Past is Future

As our portable devices get more high-tech, the batteries that power them can seem to lag behind. But Joel Schindall and his team at M.I.T. plan to make long charge times and expensive replacements a thing of the past--by improving on technology from the past.

They turned to the capacitor, which was invented nearly 300 years ago. Schindall explains, "We made the connection that perhaps we could take an old product, a capacitor, and use a new technology, nanotechnology, to make that old product in a new way."

Rechargable and disposable batteries use a chemical reaction to produce energy. "That's an effective way to store a large amount of energy," he says, "but the problem is that after many charges and discharges ... the battery loses capacity to the point where the user has to discard it."

But capacitors contain energy as an electric field of charged particles created by two metal electrodes. Capacitors charge faster and last longer than normal batteries. The problem is that storage capacity is proportional to the surface area of the battery's electrodes, so even today's most powerful capacitors hold 25 times less energy than similarly sized standard chemical batteries.

The researchers solved this by covering the electrodes with millions of tiny filaments called nanotubes. Each nanotube is 30,000 times thinner than a human hair. Similar to how a thick, fuzzy bath towel soaks up more water than a thin, flat bed sheet, the nanotube filaments increase the surface area of the electrodes and allow the capacitor to store more energy. Schindall says this combines the strength of today's batteries with the longevity and speed of capacitors.

"It could be recharged many, many times perhaps hundreds of thousands of times, and ... it could be recharged very quickly, just in a matter of seconds rather than a matter of hours," he says.

This technology has broad practical possibilities, affecting any device that requires a battery. Schindall says, "Small devices such as hearing aids that could be more quickly recharged where the batteries wouldn't wear out; up to larger devices such as automobiles where you could regeneratively re-use the energy of motion and therefore improve the energy efficiency and fuel economy."

Nanotube filaments on the battery's electrodes image: MIT/Riccardo Signorelli

Schindall thinks hybrid cars would be a particularly popular application for these batteries, especially because current hybrid batteries are expensive to replace.

Schindall also sees the ecological benefit to these reinvented capacitors. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 3 billion industrial and household batteries were sold in the United States in 1998. When these batteries are disposed, toxic chemicals like cadmium can seep into the ground.

"It's better for the environment, because it allows the user to not worry about replacing his battery," he says. "It can be discharged and charged hundreds of thousands of times, essentially lasting longer than the life of the equipment with which it is associated."

Schindall and his team aren't the only ones looking back to capacitors as the future of batteries; a research group in England recently announced advances of their own. But Schindall's groups expects their prototype to be finished in the next few months, and they hope to see them on the market in less than five years.

Schindall's research was featured in the May 2006 edition of Discover Magazine and presented at the 15th International Seminar on Double Layer Capacitors and Hybrid Energy Storage Devices in Deerfield Beach, Florida on December 2005. His research is funded by the Ford-MIT Consortium.

by Victor Limjoco

Story

http://www.sciencentral.com/

100+ megapixel CCD

2006-06-19T22:58:00.000-07:00

DALSA develops 100+ megapixel CCD

DALSA Semiconductor has today announced that it has developed the worlds first sensor with a total resolution of over 100 million pixels. To be more specific this single sensor, developed for astronomy, has 10,560 x 10,560 pixels, 111 million in total. The active area of the sensor measures approximately four by four inches and has a 9 µm pixel pitch. This sensor has been developed in conjunction with Semiconductor Technology Associates for the US Naval Observatory.

ALSA Semiconductor, a division of DALSA Corporation (TSX:DSA), an international high performance semiconductor and electronics company, announced today that it has successfully fabricated and delivered the world’s highest resolution image sensor chip to its customer, Semiconductor Technology Associates (“STA”) of San Juan Capistrano, California. The CCD device, which measures approximately four inches by four inches, has a total resolution of over 111 million pixels (10,560 pixels x 10,560 pixels at 9µm). It is the world’s first imager to break the 100 million pixel barrier.

STA developed the record-breaking chip for the Astrometry Department of the U.S. Naval Observatory (“USNO”), funded by the Navy’s Small Business Innovation Research Program. The device will assist USNO in the determination of the positions and motions of stars, solar system objects and the establishment of celestial reference frames. DALSA Semiconductor manufactured the device for STA at its wafer fabrication facility in Bromont, Quebec.

"As with past custom image sensor projects, I'm very satisfied with the versatility and capability of DALSA Semiconductor's foundry to collaborate on new process enhancements and to manufacture challenging custom CCD image sensor products such as this," commented STA President, Richard Bredthauer.

"I'm very pleased that we were able to deliver, ahead of schedule, this custom CCD image sensor to our long time DALSA foundry customer, STA," added Ralf Brooks, President of DALSA Semiconductor. "Completing this challenging, yet successful, project once again illustrates our strong process technology portfolio and our ability to work closely with our customers to create truly unique products."

Story

Born In Madagascar

2006-06-16T02:46:00.000-07:00

This rare African Baobab stands about 30 feet tall in the compound of Dr K G Desai’s bungalow on Coyaji Road. Known as Adansonia Digitata and in Marathi as Gorakh Chinch, the tree is native to Madagascar and may have been brought here by Arab settlers. The baobab has been documented in a garden-mapping programme undertaken by a group of Garware College students under Ranwa, an environmental group. The students of microbiology and biodiversity have mapped some ten gardens in the city, highlighting rare, exotic and indigenous tree species, and their location. “We started this initiative as an academic exercise to familiarise students with mapping techniques, but it can also be a guide for the layman,” says Ankur Patwardhan of Ranwa. The maps have been printed in the publication Sajeev Pune, three years ago. Other unique species include the Salix, a lone specimen stands at Deccan Gymkhana, the Star Apple, with just two or three samples that can be found in Sahakarnagar, a lone specimen of Surangi is located opposite Popular Book House in Deccan Gymkhana while the Undi and Kala Palas can be spotted inside Garware College.

TEXT BY PIA CHANDAVARKAR

Story

Be it fish ladders or butterfly trails, two girls give it back to nature

2006-06-16T02:26:00.000-07:00

Winners of the Ramabai Joshi award, Ketaki Ghate and Manasi Karandikar, are into full-time ecological restoration.

Avantika Bhuyan

Pune, May 30: AT a small check dam in Mohapada, near Nashik, shoals of fish jump their way upstream. They are helped by small steps built in the water. These passages, or fish ladders, have been constructed with a purpose— to allow fish migration from the dam to the source of the stream during monsoon.

While this is a done thing in the US and in European countries, Pune-based OIKOS consultancy is among the few organisations that have introduced it in India.

The consultancy is run by two young girls, Ketaki Ghate and Manasi Karandikar, who have been working in natural resource management, biodiversity conservation and eco-tourism planning for four years now.

With clientele ranging from private landowners to corporates like CIPLA and farmers, they plan to make conservation everyone’s business. “People think restoration and preservation is the sole responsibility of the government and environmentalists. We want to make the common man accountable for the conservation of natural resources too,” says Karandikar.

For their innovative services, the girls were recently felicitated with the prestigious Ramabai Joshi Award.

OIKOS took root when Ghate and Karandikar completed their diploma from the Pune-based Ecological Society. Karandikar had already worked with Wild, an NGO, and Ghate was interested in taking up environment restoration as a full-fledged career.

OIKOS offers its clientele services in natural resource management, ecological landscaping and eco-tourism planning. As part of the first service, they do the ecological assessment of the land and bio-diversity present to judge the potential. After the survey, they suggest ways to enhance the productivity and self-sufficiency of land in terms of water and energy. “We also provide baseline data that helps in evaluating and forecasting impacts of the development being undertaken,” says Ghate.

In a bid to save the environment, OIKOS has come up with the concept of ecological landscaping, whereby they use native plant species to beautify the place. “Alien plants like Subabhul, nilgiri and gulmohar don’t help our environmental conditions. These exotic trees alter the natural composition of forests and disrupt the integrity of life on the site,” explains Ghate. Instead, the Flame of the Forest, Indian coral tree and pipal are planted.

CIPLA is one of the corporates which has availed of their landscaping services. As part of the programme, members of OIKOS also trained the employees so that they could take care of the landscape later on.

The girls are getting appreciation for their eco-tourism planning. Instead of putting pressure on natural reserves and sanctuaries, they strive to develop degraded lands and convert them into eco-friendly tourist attractions. Mayurvan Natural Park, near Pune, is one of the areas being developed by them. As part of this project the consultancy will be creating butterfly trails and interpreting wildlife through signages. “We will have signboards giving information about the life-cycle of butterflies and the variety found in the park,” says Karandikar.

Sanctity of wildlife will be preserved at all costs in these projects and the tourists will not be allowed to go deep into the habitat. At present, the girls are working on actor Atul Kulkarni’s property in Satara, that he is trying to convert into a forest.

Story