Exploring the Sun...

Space probe Ulysses reaches end of odyssey

Paris: European and US scientists will bid a fond farewell on July 1 to the space probe Ulysses, which has circled the Sun gathering data for 17 years, almost four times its expected lifetime.

The first major collaboration between Nasa and the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 1990, “changed forever the way we view the Sun and its effect on the surrounding space,” David Southwood, ESA’s director of science, said in announcing the end of mission.

Stuffed with 10 observational instruments, the 370-kg probe is the only satellite to have circled the Sun’s poles.

Its principle objective was to explore the boundaries and impact of the Sun’s sphere of influence, called the heliosphere. One of its many findings was that the Sun’s magnetic fields, thrust outward by solar wind, extends into the Solar System in ways that were previously not suspected.

“This is very important because regions of the Sun not previously considered as potential sources of hazardous particles for astronauts and satellites must now be taken into account,” noted the Parisbased ESA’s Richard Marsden.

Scientists originally thought that the speed of solar wind — a constant stream of particles
emitted by the sun — was about 400km per second. But Ulysses proved that during much of the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle, wind travels at nearly double that speed.

The mission was originally designed to last five years, but engineers were able extend the life
of the on-board generators powering the equipment by more than 12 years. Power has now dwindled to the point where fuel will soon freeze in the spacecraft’s pipelines. AFP

HERE COMES THE SUN: A computer-generated image released by Nasa shows the spacecraft ‘Ulysses’ near the Sun

Existence...

You can now exist forever... in a DNA storage vault

Melbourne: After storing DNA samples for thousands of defence personnel, an Aussie company is now planning to do the same for the general public, with more and more people wishing to exist forever.

Under a contract, the company DNA Solutions, started off by taking delivery of samples from more than 70,000 full-time and reserve military personnel. The DNA business is witnessing a boon, as people move to place a small part of themselves into storage for eternity.

Under a voluntary scheme implemented by defence, DNA is collected from a large number of defence personnel by using a technology developed by the Melbourne-based firm. However, these samples will be used only to positively identify dead troops.

Vern Muir, Company chief, said that defence has asked him that they may have to store DNa samples from as many as 20,000-30,000 defence pesonnel. They collect the DNA by taking a drop of blood on a card containing a chemical compound that traps DNA at room temperature. This card can store the sample for at least 100 years. ANI

Playin God...

Pomi the robot penguin has hidden depths

Seoul: South Korean researchers have unveiled a penguin which can interact with humans.
Pomi (Penguin Robot for Multimodal Interaction) can see, hear, touch and emit smells as well as making faces, Korea Times reported.
It was developed by the state-run Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute which plans to put Pomi to commercial use.
The robot can move its lips, eyebrows and even pupils freely to make faces and can emit two kinds of fragrances to match its emotions. A “heart box” on the chest will feature different kinds of heartbeats depending on its mood when it is touched, the paper reported. AFP

HUMAN TOUCH: Pomi can see, hear, touch and emit smells as well as make faces

Asia’s first human DNA bank comes up in Lucknow

Lucknow: Be it a terrorist attack, mass tragedy or police verification, this bank can be of great use for security agencies and doctors. Combining biometric, anthropology and information technology together, Asia’s first human DNA bank has been set up in Lucknow. The unique bank stores all information of a person, collected from four drops of blood in a SIM card, which is transferred to a smart card to be read through special readers. “The information will be stored for 50 years,” chief executive officer, biotech park, P K Seth said.

“This is Asia’s first and world’s second bank having DNA identification system (DIS) and has been established in the biotech park under the public private partnership with IQRA Biotech Services,’’ Seth said, adding that the FBI is so far the only agency that could boast of a DNA bank. AGENCIES

Jaago Grahak Jaago!

HELP FOR CONSUMERS

New kit to test milk

Kumar Sambhav I TNN

Mumbai: If you are tired of your vendor selling adulterated milk, here is a way to catch him red-handed.

The Consumer Guidance Society of India (CGSI) released a ‘doit-yourself-milk-testing-kit’ on Saturday to examine adulteration of milk at home. It is part of a project, which also invites complaints from citizens against misleading advertisements and fake-degreeholder medical practitioners.

Honorary secretary of CGSI Dr M S Kamath announced that the milk-testing kit will be available for Rs 30 at their office as well as a few selected places across the city. Every kit can be used to examine five samples of milk and the procedure is also mentioned on a document provided with it.

“These tests can be easily conducted. However, the chemicals in the kit have to be handled with care,’’ said Sitaram Dixit, managing committee member, CGSI.

The CGSI also invited complaints from citizens against misleading advertisements and those doctors who have fake degrees or are using misleading qualifications on their boards.

US develops mother of all computers

Military Supercomputer Can Process More Than 1.026 Quadrillion Calculations Per Second

John Markoff

San Francisco: An American military supercomputer, assembled from components originally designed for video game machines, has reached a longsought-after computing milestone by processing more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second.
The new machine is more than twice as fast as the previous fastest supercomputer, the IBM BlueGene/L, which is based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The new $133 million supercomputer, called Roadrunner in a reference to the state bird of New Mexico, was devised and built by engineers and scientists at IBM and Los Alamos National Laboratory, based in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It will be used to solve classified military problems to ensure that the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons will continue to work correctly as they age. The Roadrunner will simulate the behavior of the weapons in the first fraction of a second during an explosion.
Before it is placed in a classified environment, it will also be used to explore scientific problems like climate change. The greater speed of the Roadrunner will make it possible for scientists to test global climate models with higher accuracy.
To put the performance of the machine in perspective, Thomas D’Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that if all six billion people on earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner can in one day.
The machine is an unusual blend of chips used in consumer products and advanced parallel computing technologies. The lessons that computer scientists learn by making it calculate even faster are seen as essential to the future of both personal and mobile consumer computing.
The high-performance computing goal, known as a petaflop — one thousand trillion calculations per second — has long been viewed as a crucial milestone by military, technical and scientific organizations in the US, as well as a growing group including Japan, China and the European Union. All view supercomputing technology as a symbol of national economic competitiveness. NYT NEWS SERVICE
Most powerful portable hurricane simulator made
Ateam of scientists and students from the University of Florida, US, has developed the world’s most powerful portable hurricane simulator, a giant machine capable of reproducing winds in excess of 193 kph and recreating rain. “We’ve harnessed 2,800 horse power, a locomotive’s worth of power, to recreate a wind field large enough to envelop part of a single family home,” Forrest Masters, the man in charge of the project, told BBC News. He and his team have strapped together eight industrial sized fans and rigged them up to four marine diesel engines so powerful that they are hooked up to a 19,000 litre water tank just to keep the engines cooled. The simulator’s wind speed and even the size and volume of raindrops are closely monitored and controlled by computer. The simulator can be used to evaluate building systems or anything else that can find its way into the path of a hurricane. ANI

THAT’S HISTORY: IBM’s BlueGene/L

Innovator’sCorner - Charging Ahead...

The cellphone dying on you is a daily soap. We speak to the sultans of sustenance who invented the mechanical mobile charger

KUNAL GUHA

It’s happened to each of us. Reaching the peak of anxiety on discovering the cellphone is drying up on battery charge. Nomophobics is what the Brit researchers call us. But, all is not lost, just yet. A tag team comprising Ankit Mehta (25), Ashish Bhat (24) and Rahul Singh (24) combine forces to form Ideas Forge, a company dedicated to keep your cellphone screen glowing at all times through their unique charger which can charge a phone just by cranking a lever.
Their prototype called the mechanical charger (for lack of a better name) looks like a pocket massager that has a lever blooming out like a one-petal flower. The mechanism requires you to connect the charger to your phone and turn the lever in circular motion. The cranking generates mechanical energy, which charges the phone.
Mehta explains, “A minute of winding
would give 30-40 minutes of stand-by time. Another unique way of charging would be the roll-on method, where you stick the lever back in and roll it on any surface, like your legs or the table. This makes it a one-hand operation, so one could easily talk on the phone using one hand, while charging it with the other.”
Mehta and his team had their share of cell phone battery woes, “We’ve actually seen our phones die during calls, leaving us handicapped from even checking the contact number to call the person back from a PCO. On looking outside, we realised this was an increasing pain-point and we were determined to solve this,” he expresses in a responsible tone.
The biggest fight for a technology innovator in India is the price-point. Regretfully adds Mehta, “Chinese products have spoilt the market. They may initially deliver but then eventually fail. So, people’s expectations from technology products have been lowered. So, when we deliver a quality product, the price expectations are low.” While issues closer to their heart would be attending to rural lighting and cooling, their commercial dream would be to develop a special charger. One that could be worn like a shirt and would facilitate all the external power needs (music player, phone etc) and even provide cooling on a hot day and light in the dark. Mehta smiles, saying, “And since you’d wear it everyday, you won’t leave home without strapping it on.”

The power rangers: (from l to r) Ankit Mehta, Ashish Bhat and Rahul Singh