Baby in hot oil: Miracle or hoax?

Rationalists Argue ‘Bubble Effect’ Behind Infants Coming Out Unscathed

Anil Kumar M & Rishikesh Bahadur Desai | TNN

Bangalore/Hubli: Was it hot or not? That’s the burning question after recent incidents of babies being dunked in boiling water and bubbling oil. While God-fearing people call it a miracle, rationalists give a scientific explanation.

In Hubli on Sunday, Mohan Guru Swami, head priest of Lord Ayyappa Temple, boiled nearly 10 kg of oil and then dipped a year-old baby into the pan for a split second. Recently, in Bijapur, a three-month-old infant was dipped into a vessel of boiling water and lifted out. In both cases, the babies apparently didn’t suffer any injuries.

Narendra Nayak, a post-graduate in medical biochemistry and national president, Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations, an apex body of more than 65 atheists, rationalists and humanist groups in India, told TOI that this is due to the bubbling effect.

“When two viscous liquids of different specific gravities are mixed and slightly heated, the heavier one creates an impression being brought to boil. Bubbles rise to the top and the froth-like formation coupled with fumes make people believe it is boiling. Since no one puts a thermometer into the liquid, people can claim that the liquid is boiling,” Nayak said.

This is the Leidenfrost effect, in which a liquid, in near contact with a mass significantly hotter than its boiling point, produces an insulating vapour layer that keeps that liquid from boiling rapidly. It’s seen most commonly when cooking. One sprinkles drops of water in a frying pan to gauge its temperature. If the pan’s temperature is at or above the Leidenfrost point, the water skitters across the metal and takes longer to evaporate. The effect is named after Johann Gottlob Leidenfrost who explained it in ‘A Tract About Some Qualities of Common Water’ in 1756.

“It has also been used in some dangerous demonstrations, such as dipping a wet finger in molten lead and blowing out a mouthful of liquid nitrogen, both enacted without injury to the demonstrator,’’ Nayak said.

As part of his campaign to expose so-called miracles and debunk superstitions, Nayak has conducted about 2,000 demonstrations in India, Australia, England, and Greece. Recently, he was in Hyderabad to show that fried bhajjis could be removed from boiling oil by hand using this principle. The same experiment will be conducted in Mangalore on January 16.

MYTH BUSTED?
Nobody has checked the temperature of boiling oil in Hubli
A few lemons are squeezed and the juice put in a frying pan
Oil or water is added to it before heating
As the pan is heated, oil or water starts to bubble
Onlookers think oil is boiling but it is only bubble effect
Temperature of oil or water will not be more than room temperature
— Narendra Nayak, national president, Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations

A baby is dipped in boiling oil at the Ayyappaswamy temple in Hubli on Sunday

ISRO plans NextGen vehicle to reduce launch costs by 50%

PTI NEW DELHI

After an eventful year capped by the mission to moon, ISRO scientists are now developing the next generation launch vehicle to cut by half the cost of putting satellites in orbit. The new year will see a series of tests in the development of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark III, which is expected to take to the skies in 2010-11.

The new rocket, which can put a four-tonne satellite in orbit, will help Antrix Corporation, ISRO’s commercial arm, to offer cheapest space launches in the niche market. The regular GSLV can put 2.2 tonne satellites in orbit. “The new year will see solid booster testing for the Mark III, followed by the liquid stage after which we will test the cryogenic engine stage,” K Radhakrishnan, director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre told PTI.

“We are planning to have flight testing during 2010-11,” he said. Mr Radhakrishnan said, ISRO will be able to pack more transponders in one-space flight. “This makes it a cost effective solution and will give us a niche in the world in launching four tonne satellites,” he said.

The GSLV Mark III will also help ISRO put more Indians in space at one go. As per the current plans, the agency plans to send two Indians on a week-long space sojourn in 2015. “The regular GSLV will be used for the human spaceflight. In case we use Mark III, we can send three persons instead of two,” said Mr Radhakrishnan.

With GSLV Mark III, ISRO can think of sending more meaningful probes to Mars and other inter-planetary missions, which it plans to undertake in the future. ISRO has announced that it will launch a mission to Mars in 2013 using the regular GSLV which is capable of carrying a 500-kg payload to the Red planet.

“For the Mars expedition, you can use a PSLV or the regular GSLV or even the Mark III but if you have to have a meaningful mission the instrument has to be large enough to carry out many experiments,” said Mr Radhakrishnan.

He said the agency also plans to build in more reliability into the new rocket to make is usable for undertaking human space mission. According to ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair, Antrix Corporation made Rs 1,000 crore this year by launching and building satellites for foreign firms and institutions. “We hope to grow at the rate of 20% every year,” Mr Nair said.

A major chunk of it came through the development of W2M communications satellite ISRO built for Eutelsat. The 3.5-tonne satellite was launched by Ariane rocket from Kourou in French Guiana. ISRO crossed key milestones last year with the successful launch of Chandrayaan-I in October and earlier in April, when it put into orbit 10 satellites on a single Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), becoming the first country to achieve the feat. Of the 10 satellites, two — Cartosat-2 and Indian Mini Satellite — were developed indigenously, while eight nano satellites belonged to international customers.

Scientists get one step closer to talking to dolphins

MUMBAI MIRROR BUREAU


British and US scientists have imaged the first high-definition imprints that dolphin sounds make in water, which they liken to the Rosetta Stone for deciphering dolphin language.

“Our ultimate aim is to speak to dolphins with a basic vocabulary of dolphin sounds and to understand their responses. This is uncharted territory, but it looks very promising,” said researcher Jack Kassewitz, of the Florida-based dolphin communication research project SpeakDolphin.com.

Certain dolphin sounds have long been suspected to represent language, but their complexity has made analyses difficult.

The key to the new technique is the CymaScope – an instrument that reveals detailed structures within sounds, allowing their architecture to be studied pictorially.

The mechanism captures actual sound vibrations imprinted in the water around dolphins,
providing intricate visual details of dolphin sounds for the first time.

“There is strong evidence that dolphins are able to ‘see’ with sound, much like humans use ultrasound to see an unborn child in the mother’s womb. The Cyma-Scope provides our first glimpse into what the dolphins might be ‘seeing’ with their sounds,” said Kassewitz.

The resulting “CymaGlyphs” are reproducible patterns that are expected to form the basis of a lexicon of dolphin language, with each pattern representing a dolphin ‘picture word’.

Study leader John Reid, a British acoustics engineer, said that the technique has similarities to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs.

“Jean-Francois Champollion and Thomas Young used the Rosetta Stone to discover key elements of the primer that allowed the Egyptian language to be deciphered. The CymaGlyphs can be likened to the hieroglyphs of the Rosetta Stone,” he said.

“Now that dolphin chirps, whistles and click-trains can be easily converted into CymaGlyphs, we have an important tool for deciphering their meaning,” he added.

The scientists plan to build a library of dolphin sounds, verifying that the same sound is always repeated for a particular object. They believe this may eventually lead to the ability to communicate with dolphins.

“During my times with dolphins, there have been several occasions when they seemed to be very determined to communicate with me. We are getting closer to making that possible,” Kassewitz said.

Researchers have made imprints of the sounds dolphins make in water, which they say could act as the Rosetta Stone in deciphering dolphin language.

60 schools to turn malls

Delhi Civic Body To Auction 60 Campuses Even As Student Number Rises

Nitin Sethi & Ruhi Bhasin | TNN

New Delhi: The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has hit on a unique scheme to bolster its finances: the civic body plans to auction 60 school campuses for construction of malls and hotels even as it struggles to cater to the educational needs of nine lakh children, mainly from economically-weak families, who are enrolled in MCD schools.

A proposal to auction 15 of the identified schools has been forwarded to the MCD commissioner even as the body faces increasing pressure to cater to more students. Swapping schools for poor kids for malls is not only controversial but could well smack of a scam as the MCD had originally planned to sell off nine schools but has now increased this to 60. The MCD’s reasoning is that the schools are lying vacant and unused. But the civic body seems to have forgotten that it is charged with providing an essential service through its neighbourhood schools—often the only option for a vulnerable section of the city population—and not handing over prime plots to developers. The demand for schools, in particular those offering education at reasonable costs, is unlikely to flag off.

Confirming the MCD’s plans, Prithviraj Sahni, chairman of the corporation’s education committee, told TOI, “We have identified 60 schools that have been lying vacant for the last few years. A proposal to auction 15 for commercial purpose has already been forwarded to commissioner K S Mehra.” Experts point out the number of children who do not get access to primary schools remains high, estimated between 3 lakh and 5 lakh, considering the city’s large migrant population.

The civic body’s refusal to consider reviving the schools is surprising, considering that the Delhi government has repeatedly asked the corporation to hand over the campuses to it as state-run schools are overflowing with students and lack space and infrastructure. The MCD runs 65% of primary schools, the others are managed by the NDMC, government or private parties.

While Sahni said the corporation was moving ahead on the plan to auction the schools, the MCD commissioner claimed he was not aware of any such proposal.

IN DEEP WATERS: Swapping 60 schools for malls smacks of a scam as the MCD had originally planned to auction the land of only nine educational campuses

Jan 4 is World Responsible Youth Day

Sharmila Ganesan | TNN

Mumbai: Asking for peace is likely to win you a crown at a beauty pageant. But it’s the act of “giving peace’’ that will really make the difference in these turbulent times. This philosophy, propagated by members of Rotaract, the youth wing of the Rotary Club in Mumbai, will find concrete expression this Sunday in a first-of-its-kind peace tour across the length of the city.

Taking a decision to declare the first Sunday of every year as World Responsible Youth Day—responsibility in youth being almost mythical today—Rotaract District 3140, which covers the Mumbai region, will launch its mission on Jan 4. Four hundred club members atop a truck and in four cars will undertake the day-long peace tour from Marine Drive to Navi Mumbai, halting at Dadar, Andheri, Ghatkopar and Thane before finally reaching Chembur. The tour will be dotted with musical performances and street plays, enacted by the club members of HR and SIES colleges, in an effort to coax their contemporaries into action.

At each halt, the head of the host club will field socially relevant extempore questions from the crowd such as how to file a public interest litigation. “We are even trying to get RTI activists for the rally,’’ says Shrenik Gandhi of the Ghatkopar Rotaract club, adding that the peace tour is one of the biggest district projects of the club so far. The members will be joined by the Rotary, Innerwheel and Interact movements.

This event is the second step the Rotaract movement is undertaking towards this cause after a panel discussion called The Summit that was held on December 14 last year. The preparation for World Responsible Youth Day, says Yaman Banerji of Thane club, began at a panel discussion in November. “We had earlier decided that the theme for 2009 would be ‘Go green’, and had based our material on the same, decrying the use of firecrackers and the like.’’ But 26/11 changed their plan and shifted the focus from the bombs that clog the lungs of kids in Sivakasi to those that left lasting scars on the city in November. “We have collated information from different resources to present an honest account of what happened on 26/11,’’ says Jigar Mehta, another member of the Ghatkopar club. “We want peace,’’ he adds, as an afterthought, hoping that every day will be not just Sunday but also a responsible youth day to boot.
sharmila.ganesan@timesgroup.com

GEARING UP: Members of Rotaract Club of SIES rehearse for the peace tour on Sunday

Turning the tide in tribal land

Every morning she wakes to the sound of drums from a distant santhal village. She walks barefoot to a nearby field. Every morning, she waits till they start streaming in through the green iron gate that separates Bhalopahar from the rest of Bandowan in Purulia on the Bengal-Jharkhand border. The area is infested by Maoists and inhabited by adivasis on the edge of survival.

Jayati Chakraborty gave up a secure job with Tisco in Jamshedpur, a nice apartment and a decent salary “to build something new, create something that would be of use to others. Honestly, I did not know what it could be”.

A trip to Bandowan in 2000 answered the unspoken question. She happened to visit Bhalopahar, an NGO run by another former Tata employee Kamalesh Chakraborty. She was inspired by his developmental work in the area and ecstatic when he agreed she could work with him.

She quit her job, faced down appalled friends and family. "They found it hard to believe that I would be better off working with poor people in a godforsaken village.” And she tried new things — linseed and tomato farming — finally deciding the area needed a school. “We converted a hall into a classroom and started with 66 students in 2001. It seemed the school was waiting to happen,” she says. Students pay Rs 30 a month. But paid pupil or not, no one is turned away

TARGET 2009: Deliver us from poor delivery

Ronojoy Sen | TNN

The grainy images of poorly armed policemen, captured on close circuit TV at Bombay's Victoria Terminus, were a cruel comment on the state of governance in India. The Indian police was trying to match the terrorists’ firepower. In the process, it exposed the Indian state's basic shortcoming — its inability to provide security to its citizens. The right to security means the right to live. This right was violated when heavily armed terrorists walked through the busiest parts of India's commercial capital, wantonly shooting people.

For some time now, India has had the dubious distinction of being one of the world’s terror-struck hotspots. In the past three years alone, more than 800 people have died in terrorist attacks. It may not be possible to put an end to such attacks, but surely, better intelligence inputs and coordination on terrorist groups is doable? A start has been made with plans to set up a federal body — the National Investigation Agency (NIA) — with wide-ranging powers to investigate terrorist crime. But the government has to ensure that the NIA does not become yet another talking shop. It should also consider merging the CBI and NIA as there is likely to be an overlap in responsibilities of both central agencies. Particularly shocking, during the Mumbai carnage, was the lack of police preparedness. Its lathis and antique rifles must immediately be replaced with modern weapons if the police force is to prove a match for terrorists.

The security establishment’s inability to tackle the terrorists was perhaps the starkest example of the failures of the Indian state. But the state has fallen short in other ways too, notably bijli, sadak, paani, which is shorthand these days for governance in India. Our roads are a case in point. They are the backbone of any economy. But India’s highways account for only 2% of India’s vast, 3.3-million-km road network. Only 12% are double-lane highways. At the head of the 2009 agenda must be the completion of 47 projects in the second phase of the North-South-East-West corridor. Of these, first priority should be given to 17 projects, which are more than 75% complete. Work must also begin on the 1,500-km road and rail network linking Delhi to Mumbai. The Japanese government has promised aid for this. It is up to us to meet the 2013 deadline.

Urgency is needed to deal with the shortage of electricity. The government’s target of adding 90,000 MW by 2012, which works out to a little under 20,000 MW a year, might well be a pipe dream because only 7,000 MW was added in 2007. But the government must raise the $600 billion needed over the next 10 years to ramp up power generation. State electricity boards must be reformed if private investors are to enter power projects in a big way. Power theft — 35% of the electricity India generates is stolen— has to be curbed and free power for farmers phased out.

The year ahead can bring real change if we deal with the parlous state of education and health. The UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI), which provides a composite measure of health, education and income, ranks India 132 among 179 countries. But there is a glimmer of hope. Several surveys have shown that India’s poorest families aspire to sending their children to school and enrolment has risen more than 90% even in rural India. But the quality of education provided is poor and students are unable to acquire even the most basic skills. On any given day, more than 50% of teachers in state-run schools are absent. This can be tackled if local panchayats are given more powers over local schools and there is greater involvement of parent-teacher committees.

Ramachandra Guha has coined the term “phipty-phipty” democracy to describe India. While India remains a rare example of a functional democracy in the developing world, its infrastructural problems drag it down. The answer is not authoritarian leadership, as some suggested after 26/11, but greater accountability. And as the state is strapped for cash, it must look for more public-private partnerships.