Science and Technology: News & Views

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Human body literally glows in the dark - dnaindia.com

Washington: The human body emits a visible light in very small quantities at levels that rise and fall with the day, researchers have found.

Previous studies have shown that our body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive. And such a phenomenon is not just restricted to humans, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a by-product of biochemical reactions involving free radicals.

In order to know more about this faint visible light, researchers in Japan used extraordinarily sensitive cameras which were capable of detecting single photons, reports Fox News.

To reach the conclusion, five healthy, young male volunteers were placed bare-chested in front of the cameras in complete darkness in light-tight rooms. The time duration of the whole process was: 20 minutes every three hours from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. for three days.

After analyses, boffins found that the body glow rose and fell over the day, with its lowest point at 10 a.m. and its peak at 4 p.m., dropping gradually after that.

The findings suggest there is light emission linked to our body clocks, most likely due to how our metabolic rhythms fluctuate over the course of the day. Also, researchers found, that faces glowed more than the rest of the body. The explanation for this maybe that faces are more tanned than the rest of the body, since they get more exposure to sunlight.

Researcher Hitoshi Okamura, a circadian biologist at Kyoto University in Japan said that the finding suggests cameras that can spot the weak emissions could help spot medical conditions.

"If you can see the glimmer from the body's surface, you could see the whole body condition," said researcher Masaki Kobayashi, a biomedical photonics specialist at the Tohoku Institute of Technology in Sendai, Japan.

 

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Women better than men at hammering a nail in daylight - dnaindia.com


Women are more accurate in hammering a nail in broad daylight than men, a new study has found.

Duncan Irschick and his colleagues, at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, measured hammering performances of men and women.

They found that men were more accurate than women when hammering in light deprivation, while women were more accurate in light, regardless of target size.

"We believe that our research indicates that humans have remarkable compensatory ability during difficult motor tasks such as hammering in the dark," says Irschick

He is now planning more studies to focus on understanding how hammering ability evolves in humans from early development to adulthood.

 

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Adventurer targets world's first sun-powered flight - dnaindia.com

Duebendorf: Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard unveiled on Friday the prototype of a solar powered plane he plans to fly around the world to highlight the potential of alternative energy sources. The prototype, HB-SIA, has the wingspan of a jumbo jet but weighs only as much as an average family car.

The propeller plane is powered by four electric motors and designed to fly day and night by saving surplus energy from its 24,000 solar cells in high-performance batteries.

"Yesterday it was a dream. Today it is a plane. Tomorrow it will be an ambassador of renewable energy," Piccard told a news conference. "If an aircraft is able to fly day and night without fuel, propelled solely by solar energy, let no one come and claim that is impossible to do the same thing for motor vehicles, heating and air conditioning systems and computers," Piccard said.

Piccard, who made history in 1999 by flying round the world non-stop in a hot-air balloon, hopes the prototype will make its first test flights later this year before a first complete night flight in 2010 over Switzerland.

The launch came after six years' work by 50 engineers and technicians on the so-called Solar Impulse, which has a number of high profile backers including Deutsche Bank, watchmaker Omega and Swiss chemicals maker Solvayand a budget of $97.53 million. The plane combines innovative aerodynamic features, novel light-weight materials strong enough to resist pressures at high altitude and solar technology.

A planned successor, HB-SIB, will likely be even bigger, enabling Piccard and fellow pilot Andre Borschberg to fly around the world along a path similar to the one he took in his Orbiter 3 balloon a decade ago.

HB-SIB will first fly across the Atlantic and the US and is projected to start in 2012. The pilots will spend 36-hours in the plane's one-man cockpit and fuselage in initial flights to test its ability to fly overnight.

 

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The Top 100 Dirtiest Websites : Norton Symantec Reports

Melbourne: Internet security company Norton Symantec has come up with a list of Top 100 dirtiest sites, which could infect your computer with malware.

Malware is a software that can damage or compromise a computer system without the owner''s consent.


Natalie Connor, spokeswoman of the anti-virus company, said that even visiting any of the named websites could expose a computer to infection and put the personal information into the hands of unwanted people.

"What people don't realise is when you type in a website, you're bringing down information on a page and with it could be malware," News.com.au quoted her as saying.

The list was compiled with the help of global data collected on Norton Safe Web, a site that analysed websites'' security risks.

The infected sites had on average 18,000 threats and 40 percent of the sites had more than 20,000 threats, while 75 percent of websites on the list were found to be spreading malware for over six months.

According to Connor, most websites in the list had adult content with unprintable names, suggesting they contained hardcore pornography.

Some others sites include those on ice skating, deer hunting, catering and legal services.

Hackers can apparently obtain personal information using keystroke-logging software from both PCs and Mac computers.

The reps said that hackers are a force to reckon with as cyber crime is increasing rapidly.

She added: "The last thing we want to do is scare people, we want to educate them so they know how to protect themselves.

"It's not about the fame any more of creating viruses and getting in the media. They're making money."

Norton released a sample of the dirtiest websites:

17ebook.com

aladel.net

bpwhamburgorchardpark.org

clicnews.com

dfwdiesel.net

divineenterprises.net

fantasticfilms.ru

gardensrestaurantandcatering.com

ginedis.com

gncr.org

hdvideoforums.org

hihanin.com

kingfamilyphotoalbum.com

likaraoke.com

mactep.org

magic4you.nu

marbling.pe.kr

nacjalneg.info

pronline.ru

purplehoodie.com

qsng.cn

seksburada.net

sportsmansclub.net

stock888.cn

tathli.com

teamclouds.com

texaswhitetailfever.com

wadefamilytree.org

xnescat.info

yt118.com

 

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Tooth enamel can inspire lighter, stronger aircraft

Washington, Aug 20 (IANS) A study has revealed that the structure of tooth enamel holds promising clues for aerospace engineers as they build planes and space vehicles of the future.
Herzl Chai of Tel Aviv University (TAU) School of Mechanical Engineering, who led the study with George Washington University, said: “Teeth are made from an extremely sophisticated composite material which reacts in an extraordinary way under pressure.”

The researchers applied varying degrees of mechanical pressure to hundreds of extracted teeth, and studied what occurred on the surface and deep inside them.

“Teeth exhibit graded mechanical properties and a cathedral-like geometry, and over time they develop a network of micro-cracks which help diffuse stress. This, and the tooth’s built-in ability to heal the micro-cracks over time, prevents it from fracturing into large pieces when we eat hard food, like nuts.”

The automotive and aviation industries already use sophisticated materials to prevent break-up on impact. For example, airplane bodies are made from composite materials — layers of glass or carbon fibres — held together by a brittle matrix.

In teeth, though, fibres aren’t arranged in a grid, but are “wavy” in structure. There are hierarchies of fibres and matrices arranged in several layers, unlike the single-thickness layers used in aircrafts.

Chai, himself an aerospace engineer, suggests that if engineers can incorporate tooth enamel’s wavy hierarchy, micro-cracking mechanism, and capacity to heal, lighter and stronger aircraft and space vehicles can be developed.

And while creating a self-healing airplane is far in the future, this significant research on the composite structure of teeth can already begin to inspire aerospace engineers — and, of course, dentists.

Dental specialists looking for new ways to engineer that picture-perfect Hollywood smile can use Chai’s basic research to help invent stronger crowns, better able to withstand oral wear-and-tear. “They can create smart materials that mimic the properties found in real teeth,” he said.

 

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Scientists devise ‘electronic tongue’ to identify sweetness

Washington, Aug 18 (IANS) Scientists have devised a small, cheap, lab-on-a-chip sensor that quickly and accurately identifies sweetness.
It can accurately identify the full sweep of natural and artificial sweet substances, including 14 common sweeteners, using easy-to-read colour markers.

“We take things that smell or taste and convert their chemical properties into a visual image,” said study leader Kenneth Suslick, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UI-UC).

This sensory “sweet-tooth” shows special promise as a simple quality control test that food processors can use to ensure that soda pop, beer, and other beverages taste great with a consistent, predictable flavour.

The new sensor, about the size of a business card, can also identify sweeteners used in solid foods such as cakes, cookies and chewing gum.

Suslick’s team has spent a decade developing “colorimetric sensor arrays” that may fit the bill. The “lab-on-a-chip” consists of a tough, glass-like container with 16 to 36 tiny printed dye spots, each the diametre of a pencil lead.

To the scientists’ delight, the sensor identified 14 different natural and artificial sweeteners, including sucrose (table sugar), xylitol (used in sugarless chewing gum), sorbitol, aspartame, and saccharin with 100 percent accuracy in 80 different trials, said an UI-UC release.

Researchers have tried for years to develop “electronic tongues” or “electronic noses” that rival or even surpass the sensitivity of the human tongue and nose.

But these devices can generally have difficulty distinguishing one chemical flavour from another, particularly in a complex mixture. Those drawbacks limited their practical applications.

Their study was presented at the American Chemical Society’s 238th National Meeting in Washington D.C.

 

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Indian scientists design yawn alert for dozing drivers

Washington, July 29 (IANS) We’ve all been through the familiar experience of feeling sleepy while driving. But what if your car could nudge you when you started yawning and warn you to pull over and take a break?
That’s the aim of a new in-car yawn-detection system being developed by an Indian-American and two other budding Indian scientists.

Aurobinda Mishra of Vanderbilt University, in Nashville and colleagues Mihir Mohanty of the Institute of Technical Education and Research (ITER), Orissa and Aurobinda Routray of IIT Kharagpur have developed a computer programme that can tell when you are yawning and could prevent road traffic accidents.

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that at least 100,000 road crashes are caused by driver fatigue each year.

The programme is based around an in-car camera hooked up to an image-processing software that captures a sequence of images of the driver’s face.

It then analyses changes in the face and accurately identifies yawning as distinct from other facial movements such as smiling, talking, and singing.

The yawn frequency is then correlated with fatigue behaviour and could then be hooked up to a warning system to alert drivers of the need to take a break.

The algorithm is effective at yawn detection regardless of image intensity and contrast, small head movements, viewing angle, spectacle wearing, and skin colour.

 

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Indian researchers convert textile waste into rich manure

Hissar (Haryana), July 17 (IANS) Earthworms and some animal manure could convert waste from the textile industry into a rich compost for agriculture, researchers here have found.
Most gardeners will tell you earthworm is their best friend as it aerates the soil and helps break down the soil materials, releasing nutrients for improved plant growth.

A particular species of earthworm, known as Eisenia foetida, thrives in rotting vegetation, compost, and manure. This species is grown commercially for composting because of its skills at converting organic waste into rich compost.

Vinod Garg, Renuka Gupta and Priya Kaushik of Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology here say the red earthworms could be used to produce compost from the huge volumes of solid sludge produced by the textile industry.

Sludge from the textile industry is usually difficult to dispose of. Landfill and incineration are not viable options given environmental concerns and expense. The industry is under pressure to find a green, sustainable and cost-effective disposal method.

Garg and colleagues have now tested vermicomposting of solid textile mill sludge that has been spiked with urine-free cow and horse dung, collected from local farms, in a six-month pilot-scale experiment using E. foetida.

The composting process changes the physical and chemical properties of the test mixtures significantly, the team found. The vermicomposts are much darker than the original materials and form a compost-like, homogeneous mixture after 180 days.

The team also found that the earthworms grow well in this manure-enhanced sludge, said a release of the university.

These findings were published in the International Journal of Environment and Pollution.

 

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Indian origin researchers develop equations to prevent car crashes

Sydney, July 14 (IANS) A set of algorithms developed by Indian origin researchers will enable robotic cars to communicate with one another and avoid collisions.
Bhibhya Sharma of the University of South Pacific, headquartered in Fiji, who led the research, said that the series of equations would instruct robotic cars when and how to merge lanes, which could lead to fewer accidents and ease traffic congestion.

Flocking is a biologically inspired technique and a strategy commonly used in robotics. “One of the advantages of flocking is that robots can work together and achieve what would take individuals far longer,” he said.

He further explained that each car will be controlled by a centralized brain guided by a series of algorithms to control the car. The brains will talk to each other and instruct the cars to merge lanes and move in formation together.

The team demonstrated the technique using computer simulation and is currently testing it in two wheel robots.

Fellow researcher Utesh Chand said that the cars have targets they move towards and maintain and when the cars find themselves in a merging situation, one of them will be given the position of leader, the rest will follow.

The team has written equations for attraction towards the target, enabling cars to stay inside their lanes and avoid crashing into each other. The challenge now is to allow the robot to automatically plan how to avoid crashing with the side of the road and cars travelling close by.

Sharma and Chand presented these findings at the first Rim Mathematical Association (PRIMA) conference in Sydney, said a University of South Pacific release.

 

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Taj Mahal builders used Harappan measurement units

Bangalore, July 9 (IANS) Designers of the 17th century Taj Mahal in India, the finest piece of Mughal architecture, employed the same unit of measurement used by the Harappan civilization of 2000 BC, according to a new study reported in the latest issue of Current Science.

The study by R. Balasubramaniam of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, has for the first time shown that the unit of length called “angulam” — mentioned in Kautilya’s treatise “Arthasastra” dated 300 BC — was used without a break by Indian builders for over 3,900 years until the British imposed their units in the 18th century.

The ancient “angulam” has been found to be equal to 1.763 modern centimetres, according to Balasubramaniam, a professor of materials and metallurgical engineering. He has carried out dimensional analysis of some of India’s historical structures, built during different times, to identify the measuring units used in their engineering plans.

He says he was surprised that “angulam” and its multiples “vitasti” (12 angulams) and “dhanus” (108 angulams) have been used as the unit of measurement right from the Harappan times till the pre-modern era when the Taj was built.

Balasubramaniam, who last year studied the dimensions of the 1,600-year-old Delhi Iron Pillar at the Qutub Minar complex, found that “angulam” and its multiple “dhanus” were used as the basic units of length in its design.

For example, the total height of the pillar is exactly 4 “dhanus”, Balasubramaniam told IANS.

And now in a paper published in Current Science, Balasubramaniam has shown that the modular plan of the Taj Mahal complex is based on use of grids of sides measuring 60 and 90 “vitasti”.

He says the study has established that the design and architecture of the Taj is based on traditional Indian units codified in “Arthasastra” and that “there is nothing foreign” in its design.

“The fact that the unit of angulam of 1.763 cm could match very well the dimensions of historical monuments establishes the continuity of India’s engineering tradition through the ages for as long as 3,900 years,” says Balasubramaniam in his paper.

“With the new knowledge we can analyse all the important ancient structures in India,” he says, and hopes the findings “will open a new chapter in the study of metrology (science of measurements)”.

But how did the “angulam” tradition remain unbroken for so long?

As quoted in the website of “Nature India”, Balasubramaniam believes the workers from the Harappan days were perhaps using some kind of scale “that was handed over through generations”.

 

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India to improve women scientists count

New Delhi, July 1 (IANS) India Wednesday set up a standing committee to improve women representations in scientific institutions and implement several recommendations given by a task force.
Science and Technology Minister Prithviraj Chavan said that the committee under his chairmanship with 18 members and a sub-committee will be constituted for development of women-friendly policies and practical support systems inclusive of campus housing, transport, facilities for the elderly among other things.

After an interaction with 27 senior women scientists, Chavan told reporters that efficiency of existing gender sensitive schemes will be studied and actions taken to enhance their efficiency.

“A nationwide survey of the reason for the pipeline leakage (girls not pursuing science in spite of doing well in board exams) will be commissioned. Attempts will be made to make gender audit in scientific establishments obligatory,” the minister said.

The minister said he was not “happy about the number of women scientists in the country. There are many problems. Out of 37 institutes of CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research), not a single lab is headed by a woman.”

CSIR has 4,292 scientists, of whom only 703 are women. Chavan said his priority is to address the problems rather than achieving just numerical goals. “We will have special schemes to avoid under employment of women,” he added.

 

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New instrument can detect explosives up to range of 100 meters - dnaindia.com

Washington: Scientists have developed a new explosives detector with incredible sensitivity and a range of up to 100 meters that could save lives and thwart the efforts of terrorists. The detector, developed by a team of researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is based on photo-induced acoustic spectroscopy (PIAS).

Using PIAS, the military and law enforcement agencies will have an instrument that is one-tenth the size of competing products. At five pounds, it is one-fifth the weight and is about one-fifth the cost of the competition. It works by illuminating the suspected explosive with an eye-safe laser and allowing the scattered light to be detected by a quartz crystal tuning fork.

After a series of subsequent steps, the instrument is able to identify a number of explosives without jeopardizing the safety of the operator. Funding for research work into the development of the instrument was provided by the Department of Energy's Office of Nonproliferation Research and Development and the Office of Naval Research

 

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'Parrot-like dinosaur' found in Mongolia - dnaindia.com

London: Paleontologists have discovered a new dinosaur, which resembles a giant parrot, in Mongolia.

An international team, led by Chicago University, has found the creature 'Psittacosaurus gobiensis' whose name means "parrot lizard", which it claims might have had lived some 110 million years ago.

Features of the dinosaur included a near perfect skull, strong jaw muscles and a powerful biting and crushing bill -- showing it evolved structures like those in parrots. Its short snout just a third of the skull length was different to most dinosaurs, giving the skull its parrot-esque profile.

According to the findings, the three feet long psittacosaurs may also have had a diet dominated by nuts and seeds, owing to the presence of many large stomach stones, according to the findings, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Prof Paul Sereno, who led the team, said analysis of its skull showed it chewed its food in a similar way to modern parrots. "These and other features, along with the presence of numerous large stomach stones, suggest that psittacosaurs may have had a high-fibre, nut eating diet."

Psittacosaurs are noted for being the most species- rich dinosaur genus with at least nine different species, including the latest found in the Gobi Desert. They ate plants and walked normally on two legs but could reach the ground with their three-fingered hands.

"Psittacosaurs are all relatively small in body size, ranging from one to two metres in body length. Their geographic range is limited to central Asia, and their temporal range may be as narrow as 10-20 million years in the mid Cretaceous," Prof Sereno said.

 

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Now, a robot that cooks pancakes for breakfast! - dnaindia.com

London: Here's some good news for mommies all around the world: Japanese scientists have created a flipping incredible robot that can cook.

The Okonomiyaki Robot has shown off its skills in cooking traditional Japanese flour pancakes at the International Food Machinery and Technology Exhibition in Tokyo.

It starts by stirring all the ingredients in a bowl, before pouring the batter on to a heated cooking pan, reports The Sun.

Then it turns the dish over with spatulas and serves it on a plate.

The machine can even ask you what sauces and condiments you want with it.

The extraordinary creation has been developed by Osaka-based robot makers Toyo Riki Co

 

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Now, send e-mails via mobile phone just by writing in the sky - dnaindia.com

Washington: Duke University engineering students have come up with a cell phone application that can enable users to remember things just by writing short notes in the air with their handsets, which will be automatically sent to their e-mail address.

The researchers say their PhonePoint Pen application uses the built-in accelerometers in cell phones to recognize human writing.

Accelerometers are the devices in phones that not only keep track of the phone's movements, but make it possible for the display screens to rotate from landscape to portrait modes depending on how the phone is rotated.

These devices are always "on," so there is no additional burden on the phone to use this new application.

"We developed an application that uses the built-in accelerometers in cell phones to recognize human writing," said Sandip Agrawal, electrical and computer engineering senior at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, who with Duke graduate student Ionut Constandache developed the PhonePoint Pen.

"By holding the phone like a pen, you can write short messages or draw simple diagrams in the air.

Constandache said: "The accelerometer converts the gestures to images, which can be sent to any e-mail address for future reference."

"Also, say you're in a class and there is an interesting slide on the screen. We foresee being able to take a photo of the slide and write a quick note on it for future reference. The potential uses are practically limitless. That this prototype works validates the feasibility of such a pen," Constandache added.

 

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Robot sub plumbs deepest part of ocean - dnaindia.com

London: A new type of deep-sea robotic vehicle called Nereus has successfully reached the deepest part of the ocean.

The dive -- to a mind-boggling 6.8 miles --- was organised by a team of US engineers and scientists aboard the research vessel Kilo Moana at the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean.

It makes Nereus the world's deepest-diving vehicle and the first vehicle to explore the Mariana Trench in over ten years. Nereus had to withstand pressures 1,000 times that at Earth's surface -- similar to those on the surface of Venus.

The vehicle is remotely operated by pilots aboard a surface ship via a lightweight fibre-optic tether. Traditional steel-reinforced cables would snap under their own weight. Nereus can also be switched into a free-swimming, autonomous vehicle.

"With a robot like Nereus we can now explore virtually anywhere in the ocean," said Andy Bowen, the project manager and principal developer of Nereus at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). "The trenches are unexplored, and I am certain Nereus will enable new discoveries. I believe it marks the start of a new era in ocean exploration."

WHOI engineers modified a hydraulically operated robotic manipulator arm to operate under intense pressure and make effective use of the vehicle's limited battery power. On its dive, Nereus spent over 10 hours under the sea, sending live video back to the ship and collecting geological and biological samples.

 

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The Hindu : Sci Tech : Soybean plant adapts itself to Chernobyl

The plants in the contaminated area have a mechanism to protect future progenies by blocking transfer of radio-nuclides to the seeds




Since April 1986, scientists got a unique opportunity to study the impact of radioactive contamination on the plants and animals living near Chernobyl.

The Chernobyl Forum, which is made up of eight specialized agencies of the UN, in its landmark report titled ‘Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts,’ made some general remarks on the impact of the accident on the natural environment.

Details emerging

More detailed results of research are emerging now. Researchers from the Slovak Academy of Sciences reported that plants adapted very well to the contaminated environment (Journal of Proteome Research, 2009).

In 2007, they planted ordinary soybean seeds and flaxseeds at a contaminated field in the restricted area about 5 km from the stricken nuclear power plant and at a control field in the same region nearly 100 km away.

The soil in the contaminated area had 163 times more radioactivity (cesium-137) than that in the control area.

The seeds from the contaminated area had less length and width; they weighed about 50 per cent less than those from the control field. Their water-inhibition process was found to be different.

The uptake of radio-nuclides varied significantly within the plant and also between plants.

Though the plant absorbed about 10 per cent of the radioactive contamination, the seeds showed only very low levels of radioactivity. The plants have a mechanism to protect future progenies by blocking transfer of radio-nuclides to the seeds.

Brazil nut, which is well known as the most radioactive food, accumulates radioisotopes of radium. The root system of that tree covers a large area of soil and accumulates radioactivity from the soil.

Nature does not develop any mechanism to arrest the accumulation of radioactivity by the seed. “How do you explain the difference in behaviour between soy plant and Brazil nut tree?”

“I can only speculate that trees might have different mechanisms than plants. Trees are long-living organisms, when compared to crop plants, and thus might not have immediate interest to protect their future progenies from unfavourable environmental conditions”, Dr Martin Hajduch the lead author responded to my e-mail query.

Increased levels

The researchers wanted to develop a model for plant adaptation to increased levels of radiation. They froze the seeds with liquid nitrogen, crushed them to extract the mixture of proteins they contained and ran the seed proteins on 2-Dimensional gel Electrophoresis.

They looked for differences in expression levels of proteins between seeds grown in the contaminated field versus the control field.

The seeds from soy plants grown in contaminated field contained different types and amounts of proteins compared with those from control field. The former plants made many changes to defend themselves and adjusted the levels of several proteins that guard against heavy metals, disease etc.

The researchers found that a certain specific protein which, in test tube studies demonstrated a protective effect against radiation-induced damage, exhibited a 32 per cent higher expression in the seeds from contaminated fields.

The levels of hundreds of proteins which are known for their ability to shuffle other proteins around or tie them up in storage had been lowered.

Why soybean?

Why did they choose soybean plant for the study? “The reason is that soybean is a very important crop worldwide and I worked with it also before”, Dr Hajduch responded to my e-mail query.

“Large percentage of population depends on soybean”, he added.

Do you expect that the mechanisms you observed will be present in plants growing in high background radiation areas such as certain coastal regions in India?

“I would expect it as the mechanisms that plants use to protect their future progenies from harmful effects of radio-contaminated environment should be the same, regardless of the geographical location”, he replied.

Why should we carry out such studies?

“If scientists can understand how plants survive in ultra-hostile environments, it will help them engineer super hearty plants to withstand drought conditions or grow on marginal cropland”, (Aaron Rowe, wired.com, 2009).

 

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http://beta.thehindu.com/sci-tech/article4472.ece

The world’s smallest laser that is 10 times smaller than the wavelength of light has been produced. Scientists have called it a ‘spaser.’

Spaser stands for Surface Plasmon Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. This comes nearly 50 years since lasers were first created.

Spaser are capable of producing laser-like light.

But the way the laser and spaser produce light is totally different. While the conventional laser amplifies light, a spaser amplifies only the surface plasmons — tiny oscillations in the density of free electrons on the surface of metals.

Scientists had first proposed the spaser concept six years ago. A spaser is the smallest possible quantum amplifier and generator of optical fields on the nanoscale.

Writing in the Nature, Mikhail Noginov from the Norfolk State University in Virginia and his team state that they were able to produce laser-like light by stimulating the emission of surface plasmons on a gold nanoparticle and amplifing them.

The success opens up great opportunities and possibilities. It represents a critical component for possible future technologies based on ‘nanophotonic’ circuitry.

A Purdue University release states: nanophotonics may usher in a host of radical advances, including powerful "hyperlenses" resulting in sensors and microscopes 10 times more powerful than today's and able to see objects as small as DNA; computers and consumer electronics that use light instead of electronic signals to process information; and more efficient solar collectors.

Writing in the journal Nature, Mikhail Noginov from the Norfolk State University in Virginia notes: “now [that] it has been realised experimentally, the spaser will advance our fundamental understanding of nanoplasmonics and the development of practical applications.”

 

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Indian technology down the ages @ The Hindu

Researches on technology including its origin and development in both ancient and medieval India have been continuing for more than 70 years in which Irfan Habib has contributed a large number of articles. In this volume, published in “A People’s History of India” series sponsored by the Aligarh Historians Society, he has produced a lucid monograph on the subject indicating the developments in technology, going back to the early days of Indian civilisation and also constantly showing the interaction between India, China, Europe, and the Perso-Arabic world.

Methodology
The methodology of his treatment of four principal areas — namely, agriculture; crafts; military technology, land transport and navigation; and medieval Indian technology and its social and cultural environment — remains consistently the same with a large number of drawings — several of them from actual Mughal paintings — and document extracts to illustrate the use from early days to the middle of the 18th century. The lifting of water for irrigational purposes sees this transformation from the use of pulley-rope to the use of Persian wheel since the days of Babur in early 16th century. In this device pin-drum gearing was used in horizontal bars attached to the vertical ones with the bullocks attached to the horizontal bars by rope moving in a circle and in the process lifting the water in quick succession. This device was in use in the palace of Fatehpore Sikkri. It was also employed by Akbar to clean the barrels of several guns at the same time in his atelier.

Although India has given cotton to the early world civilisation, in which the ancient Indian device “the cotton-carder’s bow” figured, there has been a lively debate among scholars in the last century on the chronology of Charka or the spinning wheel, a machine that increased production sixfold. Habib, on closer scrutiny of its parts, traced its use to the first half of the 14th century and the gadget itself to Western Asia. The Mughal painting of 1630, reproduced in a drawing in the book,clearly depicts it. Then there is the treadle, the board that weaver keeps under his feet and applies pressure on it to open and close the warp-shed. The use of the device (illustrated in a copy of Mughal painting) leaves the hands free for the weaver to operate the shuttle and this enabled him to work ten times faster. There are some problems in ascertaining the origin of embroidery with needles and tailoring in India. While Altekar claimed that the craft was known in ancient India, it would appear its spread was very limited since Marco Polo, the Venetian who travelled to India towards the end of the 13th century, could not find a tailor in Malabar. Tailors appeared by the end of the 16th century, since we know, apart from other sources, from the writing of the Bengali poet Mukundaram Chakrabarty that tailors were living in separate areas (probably Muslims) and working on monthly wages.

Building technology, which flourished in the Mughal period, has undergone a revolutionary change with the establishment of the Sultanate at Delhi in 1206. A.B.M. Habibullah hinted on this change long ago. In the pre-Sultanate period, architecture progressed from rock-cut technology to the Trabeate technique, in which the pillars are placed closely with stone blocks to support the heavy beam.

The Sultanate period brought the Arcuate system in which the Vault and the Dome were used with lime and gypsum as mortars and this enabled the use of fired bricks and rubble in complex constructions. Although lime has been in use around c. 200 B.C. in India and gypsum in the Indus Valley civilisation, the two came to be used profusely only after the 13th century.

Use of Iron
Iron was in use in India since early times. Yet, during the medieval period — perhaps for want of good blast furnace — the Indian artisans could not produce the screw, the coiled spring, the iron anchor, etc., while gun-making was a cottage industry. In ship-building, iron nails were in use by the end of the 16th century but the Indian shipwrights preferred to have wooden planks sewn with coconut ropes that lasted longer than the nails, caulk and pitch used by the Europeans. Akbar’s different inventions and his use of technology in his atelier were not followed by his successors. Silver mirror and spectacles were not manufactured in India except perhaps from late 18th century. The Indians used polished metal mirror and, if available, imported European spectacles. Paper was manufactured in abundance from the end of the 14th century, at least in Delhi area.

India absorbed changes in technology between the 13th and the 15th centuries, after which the rhythm ceased to work thereafter. Habib searches for the factors responsible for such failures in the socio-cultural environment — to which perhaps the age-old caste system and the surge of orthodoxy had contributed — a situation that was called “cultural failure of the Islamic world” by M. Athar Ali. And the search is still continuing.

 

[RPK]

Centre to set up glaciology institute in Dehradun @ The Hindu

The Central government will set up a glaciology institute in Dehradun to find out whether Himalayan glaciers were receding due to climate change or it is a natural phenomenon.

The Centre has decided to set up a Himalayan Glaciology Institute in Dehradun as presently there is no robust scientific conclusion that the glaciers were melting due to climate change, Environment Minister Jairarm Ramesh said today.

"We don't have conclusive evidence that the glaciers are melting due to climate change though it can be one of the reasons, but receding can be a natural phenomenon also,"Ramesh said.

Adequate scientific capacity will be brought in the field to study and expand the area, the Union Minister said, adding there is also a need to set up weather stations in various Himalayan states such as Uttarakhand, Assam and Arunanchal Pradesh.

He said "there is a need to study the glaciers as they are around 1,200 in numbers with some of them receding and others, including Gangotri, are advancing. The rate of receding is also different".

Ramesh, who plans to visit China on August 24, said "besides discussing the issue of climate change, I will also discuss with the neighbouring country, how we can work on the ways to check glacial melting".