Battle bots slug it out at Techfest

Mahafreed Irani | TNN

On the last day of IIT’s Techfest, robots battled it out in the grand finales of various contests: Robowars, mini F1 and a maze-solving game.

The fiercest looking automatons were undoubtedly the battle bots of Robowars. The arena saw metal clash with metal as robots of different shapes and sizes, equipped with choppers, blades, hammers and flippers, clashed. The contest’s winners, a team from Government Engineering College, Aurangabad, designed their robot for two years. “We won because of our sleek design. The flipper helped us fling the opponent, turning it upside down,” said Hemant Chambhare, who named the robot One-Shot Killer. “We spent about Rs 70,000 to build it.”

Jayvis Gonsalves won ‘the most innovative robot’ prize for his Bluetooth-controlled creation. “My robot, Blitzkrieg, is wireless. I didn’t have to worry about any wires getting entangled,” Gonsalves, a student of Dikshit Junior College, Vile Parle, said.

While the robots were locked in battle, nearby, remote-controlled mini cars were racing on an off-road dirt track full of obstacles. Two participants from Chennai, Sharadh Uday and Riten Satra, built their car in just four days. “It is powered by an internal combustion engine and made of aluminium,” said Uday.
One of the attractions at Techfest, that drew large numbers of Mumbaikars, and not just students, was a couple of vehicles designed by students of Adelaide University. Called Micycle and Diwheel, their makers called them environment friendly modes of transport. While Micycle is a stylish self-balancing electric unicycle (a cycle with one wheel), Diwheel, as the name suggests, has two giant wheels, with the rider’s seat in between. It has a joystick for navigating and uses regenerative braking to recoup some of the energy lost during the process of stopping. In another hall, Hakon Wium Lie, the chief technical officer of Opera (the browser) and inventor of the language CSS, used to design websites, spoke to a packed audience about his days at CERN, the laboratory that is at present engaged in the search of the Higgs boson, and how the web was created there. Emphasizing the importance of open, or free, data, he said: “In the early days, we Norwegians would have to pay the government to get access to the laws of the country. So one day, we uploaded all the laws on the CERN server, making it freely available to all.”

In the convocation hall, autonomous robots were trying to figure out a complex maze. This made the International Robotics Challenge perhaps the most complex contest of them all. Participants watched as the robots found their way in the maze, transporting blocks. The winners were a group of engineering students from Sri Lanka. “We love robotics and were kicked about the contest as soon as we got the invite,” said Nipuna Illangarathne of the group.

EXTREME MACHINES: Electric vehicles Micycle (bottom left) and Diwheel (bottom right). The Sri Lankan team (above left) that won the International Robotics Challenge. Cars (above right) at the starting point of the mini F1 racing contest

IIT-B students set up society to study Mars

Srinivas Laxman TNN

Mumbai: A group of IIT Bombay students have embarked on a different type of stellar mission—to “launch” Indian students and others to Mars. Towards this end, they have formed The Mars Society, dedicated to the study of the red planet.

This comes at a time when the Indian space community has proposed 10 experiments related mainly to the Martian atmosphere during an Indian mission to Mars. This muchawaited expedition is now awaiting the formal ‘go’ from Isro, the space commission and the Union cabinet.

Dhruv Joshi, a final-year chemistry student at IIT-B who initiated the move to set up the society, said that when he was in Switzerland last year, he saw a presentation about the local chapter of The Mars Society. “I then decided to form a similar society in India as well,” he told TOI.

As a first step, a conference will be held at IIT-B about Mars. “Whomever I have spoken to about this society at IIT seems extremely excited and thrilled, especially the freshers,” Joshi added.

“The primary aim of the society is to encourage human exploration and colonization of Mars. We hope to recruit university students from technical and scientific disciplines, making use of their passion and creativity to develop a strong team of pioneers,” he said.

Jhonny Santosh Jha, a key player in IIT-B’s Pratham satellite project, explained that the India chapter of the society is now in the process of getting affiliated to the international chapter. “We just have a few members now, but are expanding,” he said, adding that the society will be organizing several Mars-related programmes in the days to come.

Many scientists at Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad, an affiliate of Isro, are of the view that an Indian mission to Mars should be accorded precedence over the second lunar mission as India has already launched a successful mission to the moon.

Cool Competition for kids in Mumbai :)

SCHOOLING INTERRUPTED

Education is one of the most important aspects of childhood. But, increasingly, many children are feeling a reluctance to attend school. The reasons are serious and psychological, say psychiatrists, who add that with the right guidance and a touch of compassion the child can be coaxed back into the classroom

Shreya Bhandary | TNN

Eight-year-old Sonia Pradhan was a normal student who loved extra-curricular activities as well as studying. However, Sonia gradually began to make excuses to not attend school. Her excuses became more frequent over time and her mother realized something was wrong.
“Everyday she would complain of headaches, stomach aches, body ache, fever and so on. She would excuse herself from going to school. We visited many neurosurgeons to understand what the problem was and they all told us that the problem was psychological,” said Sonia’s mother, Manisha.
Five years after the excuses first began cropping up, Sonia has begun attending school again, but she still finds it difficult to attend regularly.
Psychiatrists diagnose her problem as ‘school phobia’ or ‘separation anxiety’. Separation anxiety occurs when a child becomes anxious as he or she has become separated from the primary caregiver, usually the mother. Psychiatrists say they have been dealing with an increasing number of school phobia and separation anxiety cases.
“The reasons for school phobia could be anything from eve teasing at school to a strict teacher to problems at home that affect the child’s emotions and psychology. An increasing number of parents have been coming to us with such problems now,” said Dr Harish Shetty, a psychiatrist.
Sonia has been attending regular counselling sessions with a psychiatrist for the past five years after much deliberation by her family. “This is not mental instability but psychological instability and I knew my daughter needed help. But I had a tough time convincing my family,” said Manisha, who is part of a joint family.
Similar problems had to be tackled by the Malhotras after 11-year-old Puneet began displaying such behaviour. A sudden attack of asthma hit his mother while Puneet was at home and he then became filled with the fear that he might lose her forever. “He thought that he might lose his mother if he wasn’t around her all the time. He would cry all the time or suddenly start coughing to the extent that he would throw up and still keep coughing,” said Neelu Malhotra, Punnet’s aunt.
As in Sonia’s case, the Malhotras needed convincing to get professional help. “We knew the problem was psychological, but my brother-in-law was dead set against visiting a psychiatrist,” said Neelu.
While in class, Puneet would suddenly walk out as he felt “suffocated”. Soon, he began returning home from school after one or two lectures. After detailed discussions between the doctor, parents and school representatives, it was decided that Punnet could skip classes till he was ready to return to school. “My nephew didn’t attend school for an entire year when he was in Class VII. All that time he attended regular sessions with a psychiatrist and his parents kept consoling him to ward off his panic,” said Neelu.
Sonia, meanwhile, showed stronger signs of refusal. “She would throw things at us to keep us away,” said the girl’s mother. “Once, she locked herself in the room and tied a cloth around her neck. We were too shocked to react.” That was when her family finally decided to approach a psychiatrist.
Dr Shetty stresses that there is no quick-fix cure in such cases. “Schools as well as families need to understand that the healing is a very slow process,” he said.
While in both of the above cases, separation anxiety was termed as the sole cause of the behaviour, city psychiatrists say a number of school phobia cases have also been reaching their clinics.
In many cases, it is children with a very high IQ who are slowly opting to not attend school. “I am currently treating a child who hasn’t gone to school for three weeks,” said Dr Shubhangi Parkar, head of the psychiatry ward, KEM Hospital. “She was yelled at by a teacher and when she shared this with her mother she was again yelled at for being mischievous. The child then completely stopped sharing her feelings with anybody.” Parkar added that while such problems arise partly at schools, the major contributors to such fears come from immediate friends and relatives.
With the help of psychiatrists, both Sonia and Puneet gradually began attending lectures again. “Puneet would get fully dressed for school but only go up to the school gate for some days. A few weeks later he started walking into the school premises and then began attending one lecture a day,” said Neelu. She added that school authorities were very helpful and supportive throughout.
It took more than six months for Sonia to start going to class again, but the problem is far from solved. “I still wake up with the fear that my daughter will suddenly announce that she will not go to school,” said Manisha, who has started taking math tuitions herself. “Since she’s not attending school, at least I need to be up to date with her portion.”
(Names of students and their relatives have been changed.)
GOING
BACK TO SCHOOL
School phobia and separation anxiety are the result of psychological, and not mental, instability
Children coming from overly protective families and single children (those without siblings) are more prone to be affected
Children with a higher IQ are also likely to opt out of school
Returning from a long vacation can have its effects too, with children deciding they don’t want to return to a classroom
School phobia can result from excessive scolding at school and/or home , though maintaining discipline at home is important so that an institutional environment with rules and regulations does not seem alien
Sexual harassment or abuse can also bring on school phobia. Such cases have to be dealt with even more sensitively
Along with the affected child, the parents can also undergo counselling to better understand the problem
The healing process in such situations is slow. It could take months, sometimes years. Patience plays a key role
Always involve the school authorities in the process. In fact, the student, parents and school should work together. Seek the help of psychiatrists

6,000km-long river found 13,000ft below the Amazon

London:Scientists led by an Indian-origin researcher have discovered a huge underground river which they believe is flowing some 13,000 feet beneath the mighty Amazon River in Brazil.

The researchers at Brazil’s National Observatory believe the subterranean river is about 6,000km long, about the same length as the Amazon on the surface.

The finding came from studying temperature variations at 241 inactive oil wells drilled in the 1970s by Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras.

The researchers have named the river ‘Hamza’, after team supervisor Dr Valiya Hamza, an Indian-origin scientists who has been studying the region for over four decades.

According to Dr Hamza, the “thermal information” provided by Petrobras allowed his team of researchers to identify the movement of water 13,100ft under the Amazon River. He said that the flow of the underground river which follows a similar contour to the Amazon has been estimated at 3,000 cubic meters per second.

It is believed that the river originates from the region of Acre and reaches the sea at Foz do Amazonas, flowing through the basins of rivers Solimoes, Amazona and island Marajo.

“It is likely that this river is responsible for the low level of salinity in the waters around the mouth of the Amazon,” the National Observatory said.

However, the researchers said the studies examining the underground river were still in their preliminary stage but they would confirm the subterranean flow by the end of 2014. PTI

THE UNDERWORLD: Researchers have named the river Hamza after the Indian-origin team supervisor Valiya Hamza

Green wonder: This erasable paper can be used 260 times

Taipei: “i2R e-Paper” is paper but not paper as we know it — not yet, anyway, say its Taiwan developers.

The product uses a thermal printer, the same kind as that used in fax machines. When the message is no longer needed, the paper can be erased with the flip of a switch — ready to be used up to 260 times. Researchers at the Industrial Technology Research Institute, where the paper was developed, say it is the ideal replacement for the paper signs and posters that are now produced by the millions around the world.

“I think the greatest breakthrough was that traditional display devices usually require electricity to write, but our technology made it closer to how we would use normal paper,” said John Chen, Vice President of the Institute and general director of the Display Technology Center. “First, it does not require patterned electrodes — it is very light, soft and rewritable. This is a true e-paper.”

What makes “i2R e-paper” stand out is its coating is a plastic film covered with cholestric liquid crystal, a type of liquid crystal structured similarly to cholesterol molecules. REUTERS

Thin band of anti-matter enveloping Earth found It Confirms Magnetic Field Can Trap Anti-Protons: Experts

London: Planetary scientists claim to have for the first time spotted a thin band of anti-matter particles, called anti-protons, enveloping the Earth. The find, published in the ‘Astrophysical Journal Letters’, confirms theoretical work that predicted the Earth’s magnetic field could trap antimatter, according to a team led by the University of Bari.

The astronomers say that a small number of anti-protons lie between the Van Allen belts of trapped “normal” matter. The antiprotons were spotted by the Pamela satellite launched in 2006 to study the nature of high-energy particles from the Sun and from beyond our Solar System — so-called cosmic rays, the ‘BBC’ reported.

These cosmic ray particles can slam into molecules that make up the Earth’s atmosphere, creating showers of particles. Many of the cosmic ray particles or these “daughter” particles they create are caught in Van Allen belts, doughnut-shaped regions where Earth’s magnetic field traps them.

The new analysis shows that when Pamela passes through a region called the South Atlantic Anomaly, it sees thousands of times more anti-protons than are expected to come from normal particle decays, or from elsewhere in the cosmos. The astronomers say this is evidence that bands of anti-protons, analogous to Van Allen belts, hold anti-protons in place — at least until they encounter the normal matter of atmosphere, when they “annihiliate” in a flash of light.

The band is “the most abundant source of anti-protons near the Earth”, said Alessandro Bruno, team member.
“Trapped anti-protons can be lost in the interactions with atmospheric constituents, especially at low altitudes where the annihilation becomes the main loss mechanism. Above altitudes of several hundred kilometres, the loss rate is significantly lower,” he added. PTI