Red Chillies...

Collider halted until next year...

2008-09-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

The incident was probably caused by a faulty connection between magnets

The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be shut off until spring 2009 while engineers probe a magnet failure.

The incident on 19 September caused a tonne of liquid helium to leak out into the experiment's 27km-long tunnel.

Officials said the time required to fully investigate the problem precluded a re-start before the lab's winter maintenance period.

The collider is built to smash protons together at huge speeds, recreating conditions moments after the Big Bang.

Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.

"Coming immediately after the very successful start of LHC operation on 10 September, this is undoubtedly a psychological blow," said Robert Aymar, director-general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), in a statement.

But he praised the skill and preparation of the teams involved in building the particle accelerator.

High priority

A spokesman for Cern told BBC News it was unclear at this stage when the collider could re-start operations after the lab's regular winter shut-down - which is partly done to save money on electricity during this period of peak demand.

A number of factors could affect when the lab re-opened, including prolonged cold weather.

The LHC has been in construction for some 13 years

"It's usually around late March or early April that we start re-commissioning the whole accelerator chain. The LHC being at the end of that chain," said James Gillies, Cern's director of communications.

"It will take us a while to get beams injected into the LHC, but I think it's fair to say this will be the priority for next year's start-up."

The accelerator chain prepares the beams of protons to be fired through the machine to make possible the collisions that physicists will use to study the make-up of our Universe.

The problem occurred last weekend, when a failure, known as a quench, caused around 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100 degrees.

The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel, which straddles the French-Swiss border.

Helium spill

The machine has more than 1,200 "dipole" magnets arranged end-to-end in the 27km-long, ring-shaped tunnel that houses the LHC.

These magnets carry and steer beams of protons which will whizz around the machine at close to the speed of light.

At allotted points around the "ring", these beams cross paths, smashing together near four massive "detectors" that monitor the collisions for interesting events.

Cern said the most likely cause of the equipment failure was a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator's magnets.

This connection melted during testing of the machine and caused a huge leak of super-cool helium.

This helium is used to chill the magnets to a temperature of 1.9 kelvin (-271C; -456F) - which is colder than deep space.

This makes the magnets "superconducting", allowing them to generate the large magnetic fields required to steer the beams while at the same time consuming relatively little power.

A quench occurs when part of a superconducting magnet heats up and causes superconducting properties to be lost.

Hot spot

Cern has procedures in place to deal with quenches before they damage equipment, but in this instance a hot spot in the machine got out of control.

"It does seem that all the systems that are supposed to protect the machine in cases like this worked as far as we can tell. But obviously something went wrong," said Mr Gillies.

"The engineers have decided that in order to find out what really happened, they are going to have to go into the machine."

One of the LHC's eight sectors will now have to be warmed up so an inspection can be carried out.

Mr Gillies told BBC News that this was likely to take a week, and that engineers would then have a much better idea of how to fix the fault.

Each particle accelerator is a unique machine, so Cern says that teething troubles were to be expected with such a complex machine at the cutting edge of technology.

"Events occur from time to time that temporarily stop operations, for shorter or longer periods, especially during the early phases," said Cern physicist Peter Limon.

Source: BBC News

Long-lost Einstein telescope restored...

2008-09-23T14:35:00.001-07:00

In this undated photo made available by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem on Monday, Sept. 22, 2008, an unidentified man adjust a telescope that once belonged to Albert Einstein, at the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Students and visitors at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem will be able to look at the stars through Albert Einstein's long lost telescope starting Thursday university officials said, after it was retrieved from a storage shed and renovated. (AP Photo/Hebrew University in Jerusalem, HO)

Albert Einstein's long-lost telescope, forgotten for decades in a Jerusalem storage shed, goes on display this week after three years and $10,000 spent restoring the relic.

The old reflecting telescope is cumbersome by modern standards, but a demonstration for The Associated Press showed it still works well enough to see five of Jupiter's moons and stripes on the surface of the huge planet.

The legendary physicist who famously theorized relations among energy, speed and mass received the telescope in 1954, the year before he died. It was a gift from a friend named Zvi Gizeri, who probably made it himself, said officials at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem where the public will be able to view the telescope starting Thursday.

Einstein, who was a co-founder of the Hebrew University, willed his records to the school. There were rumors through the years that he also left a telescope, but it took modern sleuthing and some luck to find it.

The long black tube about eight inches in diameter and 6 feet long stands on a base experts say may have been taken from the German army. It was this unique base, recognizable in a picture of Einstein with the telescope, and a signature from Gizeri on one of its mirrors, that confirmed its authenticity in 2004, when a biologist named Eshel Ophir made the connection.

The forgotten telescope was first discovered in a storage shed in the late 1990s by a computer specialist at the Hebrew University. But he did not recognize it as Einstein's, and left it in the shed.

Ophir made the connection by accident, initially mistaking another forgotten telescope for the famous physicist's. After searching through the archives and photos, Ophir realized the real Einstein telescope was actually the one his colleague had found unceremoniously years earlier.

Ophir said he immediately took the telescope to the university's Meyerhoff Youth Center, where he was serving as director, to protect and clean it.

With the exception of a new eyepiece, the rest of the device, from lenses to optics, is original.

It is unlikely, though, that a theoretician like Einstein, who won a Nobel Prize in 1921 for his theory of relativity, would have had much use for a telescope in his work.

"I don't think anybody investigated Einstein's star-gazing habits," said Dvora Lang, the current director of the Meyerhoff Youth Center. "But it was for his pleasure, not for his work."

The telescope goes on display Thursday at the Meyerhoff center in conjunction with Researchers Day, when schools across Europe and Israel will open their laboratory doors to the public.

The newly unveiled telescope will not be housed with the rest of Einstein's documents at the Jewish National and University Library but will remain in the Meyerhoff center for use by students.

Lang said she hoped by looking into the telescope of one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, a new generation of Israeli children would be inspired to learn more about science.

"This is setting them on fire," she said.

NASA Taps IBM iDataPlex for New Supercomputer...

2008-09-23T14:31:00.000-07:00

NASA is planning to use IBM’s iDataPlex server array to build a new supercomputer that will help the federal space agency collect data from satellites that are observing both the Earth and deep space. When the high-performance cluster is complete, this NASA supercomputer will offer a top performance of 42 teraflops. To build this supercomputer, IBM will use Intel’s quad-core Xeon processors.

NASA is turning to IBM and its iDataPlex server array to build a new supercomputer that can execute 42 teraflops and will help collect data from a series of satellites that observe both the Earth and the universe.

On Sept. 23, IBM is planning to announce that it will build the new supercomputer at the NASA Center for Computational Science, in Greenbelt, Md. When complete, this cluster-style supercomputer based on the iDataPlex array will offer a top performance of 42 teraflops and use 1,024 quad-core Intel Xeon processors. NASA is then planning to combine this new system with the existing Discovery supercomputer at NCCS, which will then offer a combined performance of 67 teraflops.

In addition to collecting a range of data from observational satellites, the new supercomputer cluster is slated to help NASA with its climate and weather modeling as well as creating simulations to explain cosmic phenomena such as black holes.

IBM is known for its range of supercomputers, including the well-known Blue Gene systems and its recent Roadrunner system at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which broke the petaflop mark. With clusters built around the iDataPlex system, IBM uses more industry-standard hardware, including Intel processors and InfiniBand switches.

When IBM first announced iDataPlex, Big Blue presented the array as a way for companies to use x86-based hardware to build data centers that can support a cloud computing infrastructure. However, IBM has announced a series of contracts with companies that will put iDataPlex to use as a supercomputer.

In addition to NASA, the University of Toronto has contracted with IBM to build Canada’s most powerful supercomputer using iDataPlex, which will create a system that offers a performance of 360 teraflops. Microsoft is also using a system based on iDataPlex that will test its HPC (high-performance computer) operating system HPC Server 2008.

In the case of NASA, Herb Schultz, a marketing manager with IBM’s Deep Computing division, said the NASA requirements for this supercomputer are similar to the needs of those companies developing their own cloud infrastructure or building out a business based on Web 2.0 technology.

“If you look at HPC requirements and the emerging requirements of Web 2.0, whether it’s social networking or gaming, there are a lot of similarities and a lot of it has to do with being able to scale out in a cost-effective manner,” said Schultz. “They also need to manage their power and cooling constraints and they need something that is incrementally global and something that is standard and running Windows or Linux on an x86 platform … For the kind of work NASA needs, it’s not too different than what we first talked about when we introduced iDataPlex.”

At the same time, IBM had to take into account NASA’s requirements for power and cooling as well as fitting the computer into a constricted space.

“When it comes to supercomputers, it used to be performance, price performance and can you run my codes,” said Schultz. “Now, it’s basically customers are asking that the system works underneath a certain power consumption threshold or they ask what are your flops per watt and can I put this in here without rearranging my data center.”

With the iDataPlex cluster for NASA, IBM is offering a number of power and cooling technologies including the company’s Rear Door Heat Exchanger, which is a series of sealed tubes within the cabinet that are filled with chilled water that helps cool the heated air before it comes out of the servers. IBM also rotated the racks within a typical iDataPlex array cabinet, which creates an environment that is wide but not deep, and allows the company to squeeze more servers into the system while leaving room for switches.

The new NASA supercomputer will also take advantage of IBM’s xCAT (Extreme Cluster Administration Toolkit) management software and the company’s General Parallel File System, which will allow the cluster to create and maintain large file sets based on the amount of data the cluster can process.

IBM Institutes New Tech Standards Policy...

2008-09-23T14:25:00.000-07:00

IBM on Tuesday released a policy the company plans to follow when interacting with any technical standards organization. The policy, Big Blue claims, is being instituted to ensure that any technical standards organization in which IBM participates assures that electronic devices and software programs are developed in order to interact with one another.

The new standards policy comes after IBM voiced its dissent in an apparent dig at Microsoft in April when the International Organization of Standards (ISO) agreed to fast track Open Office XML for international standardization. OOXML, used by Microsoft's Office 2007 productivity suite, is a competitor of the OpenDocument Format (ODF), which IBM supports.

IBM has said the fast-track approval process was inadequate in light of the complexity of OOXML (more than 6,000 pages of code), and exposed flaws in the standardization process. "People now have some sense that there are no brakes on putting the wrong standards though some existing processes," Bob Sutor, IBM's executive vice president of standards, wrote at the time.

Yet even with IBMs protests, the ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) approved the ISO/IEC DIS 29500, the official moniker given to the publication of the OOXML specification.

IBM's policy update comes after the publication of ISO/IEC DIS 29500 which may have prompted Big Blue to facilitate an online discussion forum between 70 independent experts in the fields of law, academia, standards, government and public policy. The conversation, which was conducted over the summer of 2008, brought the computer manufacturer to adopt the following standards when interacting with open technology standards groups, such as the ISO.

The tenets of IBM's new policy are to:

Begin or end participation in standards bodies based on the quality and openness of their processes, membership rules, and intellectual property policies.
Encourage emerging and developed economies to both adopt open global standards and to participate in the creation of those standards.
Advance governance rules within standards bodies that ensure technology decisions, votes, and dispute resolutions are made fairly by independent participants, protected from undue influence.
Collaborate with standards bodies and developer communities to ensure that open software interoperability standards are freely available and implementable.
Help drive the creation of clear, simple and consistent intellectual property policies for standards organizations, thereby enabling standards developers and implementers to make informed technical and business decisions.

"Common, open and consensus-based technology standards from reputable standards bodies help ensure that each of us can easily purchase and interchangeably use computing technology from multiple vendors," Bob Sutor, IBM vice president of open source and standards, said in a statement. "The ways in which they are created and adopted provide reasonable assurances that disparate products will work with one another, and withstand the test of time."

IBM's policy is effective immediately.

Now, TCS postpones promotions...

2008-09-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

It seems the financial turmoil sweeping the global markets has finally started hitting the Indian software industry. After a number of murmurs about impending job cuts and delayed appointment letters across top tech companies, the country's No. 1 IT services company Tata Consultancy Services has delayed promotions.

Sources told Indiatimes Infotech that in a message on the company's internal website on Monday, the company's global HR head and vice president Ajoy Mukherjee, communicated the company's decision to employees.

According to the note, Mukherjee has said that "considering the recent upheavals in the US financial markets that had global impact on the financial sector, we feel it would be prudent to wait for clarity in the business environment before we take a decision on promotions. As a result, the promotions will not be effected in second quarter this year."

However, the company communique added that TCS had completed the assessment process of selecting the individuals eligible for promotions, but was holding back promotions in view of the "current business environment which remains challenging and is expected to remain so for the near future."

When contacted by Indiatimes Infotech for their version of the news, the company's PR representative said that the company's spokesmen are traveling hence cannot be contacted.

But sources told Indiatimes Infotech that the process for most employees had been finished way back itself, and they had actually been expecting the good news for the past few weeks. The letters, they pointed out, had been given out by this time last year.

The catastrophic events overtaking global financial majors are expected to dent the revenues of Indian outsourcing companies, both in terms of the expected business and contracts they have already undertaken. Many of the affected investment banks are expected to pull out of some of their outsourcing contracts.

Analysts are of the opinion that TCS is likely to be hardest hit by the US financial crisis because of its significant exposure to Merrill Lynch, which analysts say ranks among top five financial services clients.

Incidentally, according to some recent media reports, TCS is also gearing up for another round of layoffs. The company also plans to discourage employees from staying on bench for more than two months at any of its centres.

The company had also fired close to 500 employees at the end of its annual appraisal cycle earlier this year, citing poor performance after its annual appraisal. It was also among the very first companies to announce a cut in the employee variable pay across the board.

The company which sees some project delays this quarter, but no cancellations, terms this as an employee utilisation exercise. The process will involve counselling employees and training them, according to the company executives. Employees would be asked to undertake projects on which they have never worked, and will have to update their skills.

Recently, TCS had also retrenched 15 employees from its Australian subsidiary. Last month too, the company had shown door to some 25 employees from its Kolkata and Bangalore centers, though it was done for a different reason as they were found to be fudging CVs.

Tech Mahindra, TCS set sights on Flextronics unit...

2008-09-23T14:20:00.000-07:00

The appetite for acquisitions by Indian IT companies remains undiminished with software services majors Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Tech Mahindra eyeing the India design services unit of the $31-billion Flextronics, sources said.

The global electronic manufacturing services (EMS) giant Flextronics has put the design services unit in Bangalore on the block as part of a worldwide restructuring.

When contacted, TCS declined to comment, while Tech Mahindra said it was looking at “inorganic growth options though we have nothing specific to comment”. Flextronics officials, based locally, could not be reached for immediate comments.

The Indian design services outfit employs about 250 high-skilled workforce, which is the key attraction for the potential suitors. Mindtree Consulting is also believed to have been interested in Flextronics Designs, but this could not be confirmed.

Sources said the discussions with Tech Mahindra and TCS come even as Flextronics decided to shut down the Bangalore unit leading to the possibility of a “bargain buy” for the contenders. It is believed that Flextronics has already put the employees on notice.

Either TCS or Tech Mahindra would be able to leverage the skill sets of this design services unit across their multiple business verticals. TCS could leverage the acquired resources in business segments of defence, aerospace and R&D services.

Industry observers believe that engineering services outsourcing is a growing area for the Indian IT industry and it takes considerable amount of time to build this kind of talent base organically.

“Flextronics is keen on cutting costs and exiting the business. They are trying to sew up a deal for the unit rather than closing it down,” sources said.

The Singapore-headquartered Flextronics unfurled a big India play about 3-4 years back with back-to-back acquisitions of Deccanet, Future Software and Hughes Software.

It later sold its software services unit to PE giant KKR for $900 million, though holding certain stake as well as keeping the design services functions separately. It also has manufacturing facility in Bangalore and is in the process of setting up second unit near Chennai.

Source: The Economic Times

US scientists unveil world’s thinnest balloon...

2008-09-23T14:17:00.000-07:00

Scientists have created a balloon-like membrane that is just one atom thick, which can be effectively be called as the ‘world’s thinnest balloon’.

According to a report in the Chronicle Online, the membrane, made using a lump of graphite, a piece of Scotch tape and a silicon wafer, is ultra-strong, leak-proof and impermeable to even nimble helium atoms.

The research, by Scott Bunch, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado, Cornell professor of physics Paul McEuen and Cornell colleagues, could lead to a variety of new technologies from novel ways to image biological materials in solution to techniques for studying the movement of atoms or ions through microscopic holes.

The work was conducted at the National Science Foundation-supported Cornell Center for Materials Research.
Graphene, a form of carbon atoms in a plane one atom thick, is the strongest material in the world, with tight covalent bonds in two dimensions that hold it together even as the thinnest possible membrane.
It’s also a semimetal, meaning it conducts electricity but changes conductivity with changes in its electrostatic environment.

Scientists have used graphene in the multi-layer membrane of the world’s thinnest balloon, which could be used in various applications, including filters and sensors.

To test the material’s elasticity, the Cornell team deposited graphene on a wafer etched with holes, trapping gas inside graphene-sealed microchambers.

They then created a pressure differential between the gas inside and outside the microchamber.
With a tapping atomic force microscope, which measures the amount of deflecting force a tiny cantilever experiences as it scans nanometers over the membrane’s surface, the researchers watched the graphene as it bulged in or out in response to pressure changes up to several atmospheres without breaking.

They also turned the membrane into a tiny drum, measuring its oscillation frequency at different pressures.
They found that helium, the second-smallest element (and the smallest testable gas, since hydrogen atoms pair up as a gas), stays trapped behind a wall of graphene - again, even under several atmospheres of pressure.
Such a membrane could have all kinds of uses.

“This could serve as sort of an artificial analog of an ion channel in biology,” said McEuen, or as a way to measure the properties of an atom by observing its effect on the membrane.

“You’re tying a macroscopic system to the properties of a single atom, and that gives opportunities for all kinds of single atom sensors,” he added.

Antitrust group urges limits on Google, Yahoo deal...

2008-09-23T14:13:00.000-07:00

Google and Yahoo's deal to let Google place some ads on Yahoo's search pages, which the Justice Department is reviewing, should be allowed with limits, the American Antitrust Institute said on Tuesday.

Because the search advertising market is already extremely concentrated with Google by far the dominant firm, the institute argued that consumers would be best served if No. 2 Yahoo remained independent.

Google's market share of U.S. web search widened to 63 percent in August, while Yahoo dropped to 19.6 percent and Microsoft slipped to 8.3 percent, according to comScore Inc.

"Prohibiting Yahoo from using Google ads could result in Yahoo's acquisition by Microsoft, which would effectively remove Yahoo from the market," wrote Norman Hawker, who teaches at Western Michigan University and is a fellow at the AAI.

The AAI is a nonprofit think tank that studies antitrust issues.

At the Justice Department, Thomas Barnett, the assistant attorney general for antitrust, declined to discuss the government's assessment of the deal. "We are obviously looking at the issues and trying to work through them," he told reporters.

In June, Google and Yahoo announced a deal that would allow Yahoo to place some Google ads on its search results. The arrangement has been widely seen as a effort to help Yahoo fend off Microsoft by helping it earn another $800 million annually.

Advertisers have worried that the deal will mean they will have to dig deeper to buy ads, and Hawker urged the Justice Department to consider their concerns.

He urged the department to consider barring Yahoo from using Google ads to replace less lucrative Yahoo ads, barring Google and Yahoo from setting minimum prices on its advertising auctions, barring Yahoo from using Google ads on free or "organic" search results outside North America or on any third-party web site.

Archaeologists Say Stonehenge May Have Been Healing Site...

2008-09-23T14:10:00.000-07:00

British Archaeologists have said on Monday that south-Britain monolithic site Stonehenge may have drawn ailing people from all over Europe who came in hopes of healing, according to the first archaeological digs to be conducted at the site for more than four decades.

Digs conducted by Bournemouth University archaeologists Geoffrey Wainwright and Timothy Darvill with special permission from Britain’s National Heritage organization, which administers and cares for national monuments, unearthed that grave-sites scattered around the Stonehenge area showed that not only were roughly half of them "not native to the Stonehenge area", but that most of them were suffering from some sort of injury or illness at the time of their death.

"Stonehenge would attract not only people who were unwell, but people who were capable of [healing] them," said Professor Darvill, "Therefore, in a sense, Stonehenge becomes 'the A & E' of southern England," or, differently put, an ancient equivalent of the modern-day Lourdes shrine, which is revered for the same miraculous healing powers.

Stonehenge is built from massive stones – as heavy as 50 tons – called sarsens, which are set up standing in concentric circles, surrounded by a circular earth mound and ditch (this earth formation is often encountered in the Neolithic as a primitive form of fortification). The sarsens are surrounded by smaller stones, made of white-speckled dolomite, also known as bluestones due to the bluish hue they take on when cut or wet. The sarsens were quarried 24 miles north of Stonehenge, in Marlborough Downs, while the bluestones were imported from Wales, regardless of the great effort, due to their believed healing abilities. As an aside, bluestones are first recorded in medieval literature as healing stones, although their presence here may indicate that their reputation as such is far older than that.

Scientists have also used the opportunity of this dig to conduct carbon dating of the site. They dug a 2.5m x 3.5m patch of earth beneath one of the bluestones, and sampled organic material from the area. This was carbon-dated, placing the site "between 2400BC and 2200BC,” with a generally-accepted average of 2300BC. This is 200 years earlier than previous estimates, and is the most precise dating of the site that archaeologists have been able to produce to date. "It's an incredible feeling, a dream come true," says Prof. Wainwright.

The date that scientists have resolved for the Stonehenge site coincides with one of the earliest skeletons found there, the “Amesbury Archer,” a wealthy, powerful fellow who seemed to have come from the Alps in Europe, and who had knowledge of metallurgy. One of the theories for his presence there is that he brought the trade to the area, and practiced it there, perhaps even had a hand in construction or other works on Stonehenge, but a serious knee injury and a grave dental problem that were discovered upon examination of the skeleton, propose another theory: that he may have been one of the early pilgrims who sought healing at the holy site; it’s unknown whether the stones were standing or not at the time.

The earliest signs of habitation however, according to the Bournemouth Univ. team’s findings, date as far back as 7200BC, that’s three and a half millennia before any previous finds. This means that, at the time of the giant stones’ erection, the place already had a long history.

Space Tourist Ready for Bumpy Ride...

2008-09-23T14:05:00.000-07:00

A Texan space tourist said Tuesday that he was undaunted by two previous jolting re-entries by Russia's Soyuz capsule and was looking forward to conducting his own science experiments in space.

Richard Garriott, a video game developer from Austin, Texas, will pay a reported $35 million to fly into space next month alongside a NASA astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut headed to the international space station.

After 10 days in space, Garriott, whose father is a retired NASA astronaut with two space flights, will return to Earth with the station's old crew aboard a Soyuz re-entry vehicle, a three-man capsule that has not worked properly in its last two flights.

In April, a Soyuz capsule landed about 420 kilometers off course in the Kazakh steppe after explosive bolts failed to detonate ahead of reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, sending the craft into a steep descent. Last year, a Soyuz capsule carrying Malaysia's first astronaut also made a so-called "ballistic" landing, deviating from its landing zone by 200 kilometers and subjecting the crew to enormous gravitational forces. Faulty bolts were also blamed.

"I personally don't think of a ballistic entry as a problem. It is not a particularly abnormal form of re-entry," Garriott told a news conference at the Gagarin cosmonaut training center outside Moscow.

The Federal Space Agency conducted an investigation into the cause of the ballistic landings, and in July two cosmonauts aboard the station removed an explosive bolt for study back on Earth.

Primitive Fingers Found in Prehistoric Fish...

2008-09-23T14:02:00.000-07:00

An ancient fish sported something like fingers that were the precursors to our own digits, according to an analysis of a new fossil skeleton.

"It's really the last piece of evidence to say fingers are not new. They were really present in fish," said lead researcher Catherine Boisvert, an evolutionary biologist at Uppsala University in Sweden.

The fossilized skeleton belonged to Panderichthys, a predatory fish that spanned up to 4 feet (130 cm) and likely dwelled in shallow waters where it inched along the muddy bottom about 385 million years ago.

While the fossil was discovered in the 1990s by chance in a brick quarry in Latvia in northern Europe, scientists only recently analyzed the fins with computed tomography (CT) and found that the right paddle is tipped with four bony extensions.

If you were to turn back the clocks to the Devonian period when Panderichthys lived and spied the fish, you would not have noticed its "fingers," Boisvert explained.

That's because the bony digit precursors were tucked beneath the fin's skin and bony scales and rays.

The fan-like array of fingers, however, would have made Panderichthys' paddles broader at the ends. The broad fins would have made for stronger supports for the fish to lean on rather than for all-out swimming.

"It was probably using its front fins as supports to be able to look up, kind of doing push-ups at the bottom of the river looking outside with its eyes," Boisvert said, adding that the fish's eyes were on the top of its skull and thus probably good for looking above the mud for fish food.

Though Panderichthys was not made for landlubbing, if the need to hop from the water arose, the fish had the means.

"So if it was stuck in a pool and it was drying out, [the fish] would have been able to get itself out to the next water body," Boisvert told LiveScience. "It's doing push-ups on land with its big fins and then its pelvic fins (hind fins) are used for an anchor in the mud."

Basically, Panderichthys would have dragged its body along land. "It wouldn't have been pretty," she added.

The fossil finding, detailed in the Sept. 21 issue of the journal Nature, fills in a gap in the evolution of tetrapods, or four-legged animals. About 380 million years ago, our fishy ancestors crept onto land. Fossil evidence has continued to refine scientists' understanding of this transition, though they still have many questions regarding the fin-to-limb transition and development of other locomotion features.

For instance, one such transitional fish called Tiktaalik roseae lived about 375 million years ago and showed signs of both water living and land trekking. However, Boisvert said, even though Tiktaalik is closer evolutionarily to tetrapods, its specimens lack the distinct finger precursors seen on Panderichthys.

University of Pune ties up with Intel...

2008-09-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

The University of Pune (UoP) and semiconductor giant Intel India on Monday announced a joint initiative in order to create a specialised workforce in Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) layout design, required by the semiconductor industry.

The programme aims at tapping talented postgraduate and undergraduate science students and generating awareness about the opportunities that exist for basic science passouts, in specialised fields like VLSI design.

Initially, the focus will be on M.Sc students from UoP’s department of electronic science (DoES) and undergraduate students will later be covered later in areas such as custom layout for integrated circuits (IC) design.

VLSI refers to the process of creating integrated circuits by combining thousands of transistor-based circuits in a single chip. The semiconductor industry is a major user of this process to create products that have wide-ranging applications across the industry.

While trained manpower employability for India’s VLSI design industry is pegged at 7.80 lakh by 2015, the industry continues to grapple with a huge demand-supply gap for competent professionals.

As part of its corporate social responsibility activity, Intel runs a dedicated higher education (IHE) progamme that focusses on technology curriculum, research with universities, student programmes and technology entrepreneurship. It is through IHE that Intel got into the country’s ‘first-of-its-kind tie-up’ involving a university electronic science department.

While the tie-up was jointly announced by Pandit Vidyasagar, director, UoP’s board of college and university development, and Manav Subodh, corporate affairs head for Intel India’s south-west region — the foundation was laid last year when UoP DoES and Intel started a pilot project to train 10 M.Sc students in VLSI layout design.

Senior DoES faculty member S.V. Ghaisas said, “Intel helped us install the Cadence software tools required for IC mask design studies, which is a key stepping stone to advanced learning in VLSI design.” The select students underwent a six-month special internship programme at Intel’s India headquarters in Bangalore as well as at other companies like Sasken, he said. “Barring one student, who went for MS studies abroad, the rest got jobs at leading companies,” said Ghaisas.

Interacting with reporters, Subodh conceded that joint initiatives like these needed to be scaled up further to meet the huge manpower requirement. “What we have attempted here is to explore the niche areas where the universities have a strength and work towards structured programmes,” he said. The idea was also to retain the interest of basic science students in such niche areas, he added.

On his part, Vidyasagar said that the tie-up forms a key element of the UoP’s thrust on greater industry-institute interaction. “We want such joint initiatives to work as sort of integrated finishing schools that ensure direct employability for students,” he said.

Source: The Times of India

Anil slots Rs 60k cr for green energy...

2008-09-23T13:49:00.000-07:00

Says RNRL too may put Rs 12,000 cr in cement, shipping biz.

Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG)-promoted Reliance Power (R-Power) is planning to invest over Rs 60,000 crore in renewable and alternative energy resources such as hydroelectric, wind, solar and fuel cell-based power.

In addition, Reliance Natural Resources (RNRL), the fuel transportation arm of the Group, is planning to invest over Rs 12,000 crore in cement and shipping businesses.

R-Power Chairman Anil Ambani said the company was planning to generate about 5,000 MW from hydroelectric energy and that most of the projects for the same would come up in water-abundant northeastern states. He was addressing the company’s 14th annual general meeting (AGM) in Mumbai.

"We have focused on the northeastern region for our hydro-projects not only because of location and resource advantages, but also because of our commitment to the growth of the region," he said.

Ambani said R-Power had engaged international companies such as Halcrow of the UK, SNC Lavlin of Canada and SMEC of Australia to assist in various aspects of their hydro projects.

Currently, R-Power has plans to develop 1,000 MW Siyom and 700 MW Tato-II in Arunachal Pradesh, and 280 MW hydroelectricity at Urthing Sobla in Uttarakhand. The overall investment planned in the hydro sector alone could be over Rs 50,000 crore, said a top R-Power official.

The global financial crisis, the official said, would not affect the company’s fund-raising plans as its balance sheet was well capitalised through money raised from its recent initial public offer (IPO). The company had mobilised around Rs 11,500 crore through the IPO.

Commenting on the wind energy sector, Ambani said ADAG was currently setting up facilities for 150 MW wind power in Maharashtra and had plans to add 500 MW over the next three years at suitable locations.

A source said R-Power has placed equipment orders for 150 MW with wind energy major Suzlon. New wind power installations would come up in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat before December 2009.

Recent initiatives announced by the Government of India for Grid Interactive Multi-Megawatt Solar Thermal Power had given a boost to the solar power market in the country, he said, adding that R-Power was considering the possibility of setting up a one-of-its-kind, 100 MW grid interactive concentrating solar power (CSP) plant through an exclusive alliance with a technology provider.

R-Power was also evaluating the techno-commercial feasibility of commercially producing reformer-based cells and hydrogen technology in India. The company was in an advanced stage of discussion with a global firm on the design, development and manufacture of the same, he said.

Addressing the shareholders of RNRL, Ambani said the company was planning to invest Rs 10,000 crore to set up cement facilities to produce about 20 million tonne per annum. These plants would come up at locations closer to R-Power's power projects, he added. Ambani also said that R-Power was planning to acquire about six ships to foray into shipping logistics with an investment of over Rs 2,000 crore.

Source: Business Standard

Etisalat to acquire 45% stake in Swan Telecom for $900 million...

2008-09-23T13:47:00.000-07:00

New connection: A mobile telecom tower. Swan Telecom has licences to provide mobile phone services in 10 out of 22 circles in India.

The second largest Arab telecom company by market value, Emirates Telecommunications Corp., or Etisalat, said on Tuesday it has agreed to buy a 45% stake in Swan Telecom Pvt. Ltd that recently acquired licences to provide mobile telephony in India.

The deal would have to be cleared by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, or FIPB, telecom minister A. Raja said on the sidelines of a function in New Delhi.

United Arab Emirates-based Etisalat said by email from Abu Dhabi that it has agreed to buy some 45% of Swan Telecom for cash up to $900 million (Rs4,113 crore).

The remaining 55% of the shares of Swan Telecom are held by several entities, including its promoters Dynamix Balwas Group, the email said.

Separately, Swan Telecom’s managing director, Shahid Balwa, said: “As of today, we have got spectrum in 10 circles. We will be launching our first operation in the first quarter of next financial year. The spectrum in 10 circles includes the lucrative Delhi service area.”

The Business Standard newspaper first reported on Tuesday that Etisalat would pick up 49% in Swan Telecom and increase the stake to 51% after FIPB approved the deal, quoting unnamed sources.

Etisalat offers phone services in 16 countries across Asia, West Asia and Africa, servicing more than 64 million customers. The company reported annual net revenues of $5.8 billion and net profits of $1.83 billion for 2007.
Etisalat also has a fully owned subsidiary in Bangalore, Etisalat Software Solutions, that sells operational and billing support systems to the telecom industry.

Mumbai-based real estate and hospitality group Dynamix Balwas Group has assets of about $4 billion.
Swan Telecom has got licences to provide mobile phone services on the GSM, or global system for mobile communications, technology platform in 10 out of 22 telecom circles in India, and is awaiting clearance for another two circles, the company said.

“This is good news as the move to expand globally beyond its operations in the UAE is expected to be viewed positively because that way it diversifies its operations and does not depend on only one market,” said Sherif Abdelkhalek, institutions account manager at Beltone Financial, an investment bank operating in West Asia and North Africa.

“The share price might not immediately react to the news because of current market conditions but in the long and medium term, this will benefit revenues and share price,” Abdelkhalek said.

Citigroup Global Markets Ltd and Deutsche Bank AG were advisers for Etisalat and Swan Telecom, respectively.

Swan Telecom’s Balwa said Indian shareholders would remain the controlling stakeholders in Swan Telecom after the Etisalat deal.

A telecom expert said Etisalat always wanted to come to India and only new players could be its potential candidates. “Given the telecom licence and roll-out obligations, and what they want to do, there is always a certain valuation attached to it,” said Rajesh Jain, national industry director for information, communication and entertainment practice at consultancy KPMG India Pvt. Ltd.

RIL eyes oil fields in Latin America, Middle East...

2008-09-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries is redrawing its overseas acquisitions strategy to include more of producing and discovered acreages in the shopping list, even as the company is on way to pumping 89 million cubic metres per day of gas by 2010 from its Krishna-Godavari basin acreage off the Andhra coast.

"We are now more open to acquiring producing or discovered assets. Earlier, that was not the case," president and CEO of the company's oil and gas business P M S Prasad told TOI. This is aimed at improving "portfolio balance". Reliance had so far focused on exploration acreages that came comparatively cheap but also with the risk of failure to find hydrocarbons. A portfolio mix of producing or discovered fields can offset such risks.

Prasad said the company was trawling Latin America, West Asia and Far East but not Russia and Central Asia. "We want to go where we can win on merit and where there is heavy crude," he said. Reliance's refining strategy has been to use advanced plant configuration to process more of heavier crudes, which come cheaper than benchmark crudes, for rising refining margins.

The acquisitions strategy shift comes in the wake of the company starting commercially pumping oil from the MA discovery in the acreage and setting the stage for initiating gas production in the first quarter of 2009 calendar year.
Prasad said as of now, the Krishna-Godavari acreage would yield 89 mcmd of gas.

This, according to present government figures, will double the availability of gas in the country. The Dhirubhai-1 and 3 discoveries, the first two of the 18 strikes Reliance has reported in the concession that is identified as Block D6, 80 mcmd of gas will come out daily within the next 6-8 quarters. Another 9 mcmd will come out from the MA discovery, predominantly an oilfield, envisaged to produce 40,000 barrels a day when it reaches peak production in 18 months.

Reliance is investing $5.2 billion in bringing Dhirubhai-1 and 3 discoveries that will start production with 15-20 mcmd and reach a peak of 80 mcmd. This peak will last for 2-3 years when the company will invest another $3.5 billion to maintain output for the subsequent 7-8 years. "The field's life is 10-12 years, 7-8 years of which will be plateau," Prasad said.

Source: The Times of India

Anil questions oilmin's late entry in gas row...

2008-09-23T13:41:00.000-07:00

Claiming that government would lose over Rs 40,000 crore due to Mukesh Ambani-led RIL's oil and gas venture, Anil Ambani on Tuesday questioned oil ministry's 11th hour intervention in the court to help a private player. "It is anyone's guess what prompted the ministry's belated intervention," Anil Ambani said at the AGM of group company Reliance Natural Resources Limited.

Stating that the petroleum ministry did not think it fit to intervene in the two years since the litigation between his company and RIL began in Mumbai High Court, he expressed surprise over ministry's intervention now, which he felt was to help a private player while "scrupulously keeps away when it comes to protecting the rights of a Navratna such as NTPC." Debunking the perception that higher gas prices would benefit the government in the form of increased profit share, he said, "...based on capex numbers, as reported, it is estimated that government may not get more than Rs 1,000 crore in first five years,while RIL gets more than Rs 20,000 crore during the same period..."

Also, Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Natural Resources (RNRL) plans to enter cement manufacturing and shipping activities with an investment of Rs 12,000 crore.

"We will invest Rs 10,000 crore in cement business and Rs 2,000 crore in shipping," RNRL vice-chairman Anil Singhvi said on the sidelines of the company's annual general meeting on Tuesday. "Our foray into cement and shipping will take 3-4 years period," Singhvi said. RNRL chairman Anil Ambani had said that "we are actively considering entering into cement manufacturing with 20-million tonnes capacity". However Anil Ambani owned Reliance Power Ltd will complete funding for two so-called ultra-mega power projects this year. Reliance is "likely to achieve'' financial closure for the Sasan thermal power project "by the end of this year,'' chairman Anil Ambani said.

Funding for the Krishnapatnam project is expected later this year, he said. The company has qualified to bid for a third ultra-mega power project at Tilaiya in the eastern state of Jharkhand, Ambani said. Each of these 4,000 megawatt, coal-fired projects requires an investment of as much as Rs 20,000 crore ($4.4 billion), he said.

Source: The Times of India

SAIL setting up steel processing unit in J&K...

2008-09-23T13:40:00.000-07:00

In line with its strategy to meet the market demand for tailor-made steel products and to help increase per capita steel consumption in rural areas, Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) is in the process of setting up steel processing units (SPUs) at locations across the country where it does not have any production facility.

The latest such unit to be set up is the sixth SPU at Lassipora in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir, the foundation stone of which was laid by the Union Minister for Steel, Mr Ram Vilas Paswan, earlier this week.

SAIL is investing Rs 100 crore in setting up the unit which will have a 40,000 tonnes per annum capacity TMT bar mill and a 60,000 tonnes per annum GP coils/sheet cut-to-length and corrugation line.

More investments

Speaking on the occasion, the Steel Minister urged SAIL to explore the possibility of increasing investment in Jammu and Kashmir.

Mr S. K. Roongta, Chairman of SAIL, said the company’s existing distribution centre at Leh was the highest-altitude steel outlet in the world.

Bihar unit

SAIL’s first SPU, coming up in Bettiah in Bihar at an estimated cost of Rs 236 crore, will have the capacity to produce 265,000 tonnes of TMT bars and pipes.

Another unit in Mahnar, Bihar, is being set up in two phases at a cost of around Rs 265 crore, which will produce 1.5 lakh tonnes of black and galvanised tubes and 100,000 tonnes of TMT bars.

Three SPUs are being set up in Madhya Pradesh – at Gwalior, Ujjain and Hoshangabad – involving an investment of around Rs 83 crore, Rs 100 crore and Rs 154 crore, respectively.

Source: Business Line

Ranbaxy faces more enquiries on FDA ban...

2008-09-23T13:37:00.001-07:00

A week after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) blocked over 30 drugs manufactured by Ranbaxy from its two facilities in India, all major geographies have sought details of the company's exports from India.

Sources said that company's major markets including Canada and countries in EU have expressed concern and sought details on the drugs exported to these markets, and the company's action plan on the issue. Drug regulators in developed markets are studying the USFDA ban and seeking details from the company, including drug approvals.

When contacted a Ranbaxy spokesperson said: "We are not responding to any media reports".
Shares of Ranbaxy hit an 18-month low and closed at Rs 308.85 on Tuesday, a drop of over 11% since Monday, on adverse developments, and fears about its revenue outlook, analysts said. US is the largest market for the company, and contributed revenues of $390 million, while EU's share was $365 million in the company's total sales of $1.6 billion last year.

The import alert covers over 30 generic drugs, including medicines such as Simvastatin, Pravastatin, Ciprofloxacin and Gabapentin, Ciprofloxacin HCl, Clarithromycin and Lamivudine.

Even though the FDA clarified that the move was preventive and the drugs were safe, regulatory bodies across major geographies are not taking any chances and want to be reassured. Analysts say that the company is being dragged down by negative news and a slowdown in revenues is expected, particularly in the US revenues.
The manufacturing deficiencies for issuing the import alert include potential cross-contamination of drugs, inadequate sterile processing and failure of keeping records.

The Ranbaxy issue is a dampener for the country's generic industry. "I think the US FDA-Ranbaxy issue has created a significant issue for the Indian pharma sector. Ranbaxy is the flag bearer for the Indian generics industry and the US FDA action is bound to have a serious impact on the perception that other markets have on the quality of Indian products," says Probir Rao, managing director, investment banking, UBS Securities India. Experts are concerned about the loss of reputation of one of the top 10 generic companies in the world.

"The development has destroyed the brand which Ranbaxy had carefully built over the last 20 years. The image created is that of spurious drugs, while this is not the case. Investigations have been on for the last two years, hundreds of batches have been tested and documents have been sought, but the regulator has not found the company lacking in quality issues," sources said.

Some feel that the issue had assumed "political connotations". "The manner in which the company has been constantly under attack, and the issue has been kept alive, shows that there may be lobbying to create roadblocks for the company," experts added.

Earlier US Congressmen have expressed doubts over the quality of inspections conducted by the US FDA on Ranbaxy's manufacturing facilities before giving them marketing nod to generic medicines, alleging that the company supplied "fraudulently approved and manufactured" medicines.

However, analysts feel that the company has managed the issue poorly, and treated it in a lackadaisical manner.
"While the ban is a negative for the company, I see this as a one-off incident. However it could impact the image of Indian pharma if left unresolved. The issue is already a messy one that need not be further aggravated by politicising the same or looking for devils where none exist. I am confident that the company has the manufacturing and regulatory skill set to overcome this ban", says Sanjiv Kaul, MD ChrysCapital, and an ex-Ranbaxy executive.

Source: The Times of India

Punj Lloyd bags $800 mn contract...

2008-09-23T13:37:00.000-07:00

Engineering firm Punj Lloyd on Tuesday said it has bagged a $ 800 million (Rs 3,636 crore) contract for construction related work from Qatar Petroleum.

In a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange, Punj Lloyd said that under the contract it would undertake engineering, installation and commissioning order for laying of 211 km pipeline. The project would be completed in 32 months.

"This is the fourth Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract that we have bagged in Qatar. The project will facilitate in meeting the power and water production growth of Qatar," Punj Lloyd Group Chairman Atul Punj said.

The company is also executing EPC projects, including the Doha Urban Pipeline Relocation and the Multi-Product Pipeline from Qatar Petroleum Refinery to Doha Depot and fuel systems for the New Doha International Airport.

"Owing to the rapid infrastructure and oil and gas development in the region, we will continue to secure large ticket orders for our portfolio," he added.

With this, the order backlog for Punj Lloyd Group stands at Rs 24,063 crore.

Source: The Hindu

NASA Deploys Rubber Ducks to Track Glacier Water...

2008-09-22T15:46:00.000-07:00

An army of 90 rubber duckies floating on meltwater inside the fastest moving Greenland glacier are helping NASA study how the movement of glaciers speeds up during summer, according to a Reuters report today.

The duckies have "science experiment" and "reward" written on them in three languages along with an email address to contact if found. None have been reported yet, but this is a remote area off the west coast of Greenland.

In addition to the ducks, Alberto Behar of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory also sent a football-sized, floating robotic probe carrying a GPS device, pressure sensor, thermometer and accelerometer to study the inside of the glacier. The duckies and probe were lowered on a rope into a moulin -- a hole in the glacier where meltwater rivers drop down to the bottom of the glacier and lubricate the ice river's move towards the ocean. You can think of them as ice-walled water slides. The duckies and probe will float down river under the glacier and allow researchers to get a better sense for what is underneath all that ice, and where the meltwater comes out.

The probe's accelerometers will be able to tell when the water is slowing down or speeding up, indicating a waterfall, rapids or other features inside the glacier. Behar, a space robotics designer, designed the little probe as well as probes for many extreme environments including Antarctic boreholes and deep sea hydrothermal vents that can reach up to 700 degrees Fahrenheit.

The experiment is designed to shed light on the mechanics of how these rivers of ice flow faster in the summer. One theory is that the summer sun melts pools of water on the surface that melt their way to the base of the glacier and form moulins. The meltwater pouring down into them would then lubricate the ice-rock interface and allow the ice to flow faster down to the ocean.

The fast-moving Jakobshavn Glacier is a good place to start because it is the source of nearly seven percent of the ice coming off Greenland. In fact, Jakobshavn is thought to be the source of the infamous iceberg that sank the Titanic in April 1912. Glaciers on land such as this one will cause oceans to rise if it melts, which makes understanding and tracking its movements all the more relevant to us.

Lift could take passengers straight into space...

2008-09-22T15:36:00.000-07:00

Japanese scientists are attempting to build a lift that will take passengers 62,000 miles into space.

The project could see the realisation of a vision that has inspired science fiction writers for generations.


	A Nasa image of how a 'space elevator' might look

The lift's carriages, which will themselves require new feats of engineering, would move up and down 22,000 mile-long cables.

Those cables would need to be stronger and lighter than any material ever woven.

They would be anchored to the ground and disappear into the sky, eventually reaching a satellite docking station orbiting above the Earth.

Scientists hope that as well as carrying human passengers, the carriages could also haul huge, solar-powered generators that could power homes and businesses back on Earth. It could also remove barrels of nuclear waste, dumping them into space.

"Just like travelling abroad, anyone will be able to ride the elevator into space," Shuichi Ono, chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association, told The Times.

Japan's promise to spend £5 billion on the project has sparked swift reaction from other quarters: several competing space lift projects are now believed to be under way, with Nasa among those involved.

An international conference is to be held in Japan in November, aiming to draw up a detailed timetable for the machine's production.

One of the biggest challenges is expected to be producing a fabric for the lift's cables. It must be extremely light while also resilient enough to resist the various matter that it will be struck by in space. It is expected that an answer will be found in carbon nanotubes - microscopic particles woven into fibres.

Professor Yoshio Aoki, a director of Japan's Space Elevator Association and a professor of precision machinery engineering at Nihon University, said the cables would need to be 180 times stronger than steel. It would also need to four times stronger than the strongest carbon nanotube fibre ever produced, he added.

On the question of how the lift's carriages will be powered, Prof Aoki said: "We are thinking of using the technology employed in our bullet trains.

"Carbon nanotubes are good conductors of electricity, so we are thinking of having a second cable to provide power all along the route."

It is thought the concept of the lift was first envisioned by the great sci-fi writer Arthur C Clarke, in his 1979 book The Fountains of Paradise.

India to Reach for the Moon Next Month...

2008-09-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

Chandrayaan is all set to make history; taking India to the moon...

If everything goes as planned, any of the days starting October 19th to 28th would be remembered as a red-letter day for us Indians. Our very first, homespun lunar probe, Chandrayaan is all set to make its first voyage to our nearest celestial body -- the Moon on these tentative dates -- depending on the weather conditions then. If the weather plays spoil sport, the mission will need to be postponed to December. In any case, a successful mission will no doubt put India in the elite club of counties who have been able to send missions to moon.

Chandrayaan is still undergoing tests and is yet to clear the vibration and acoustic tests, which it would be subjected to later this week. These tests will simulate the conditions that the probe will need to bear at the tine of launch. These include high-temperatures, vibrations during take off and not to mention, the tremendous noise that is expected of a typical rocket launch.

Chandrayaan will carry as many as 11 payloads -- five from India, three from the European Space Agency (ESA), one from the Bulgarian Space Agency (BSA) and two from NASA, making it a truly global initiative. The two-year mission will be invaluable as the Chandrayaan is programmed to orbit the Lunar surface and digitally map it. It will also send information on the traces of the composition of the lunar surface apart from looking for atomic minerals such as thorium and uranium. The probe is also equipped with high-resolution cameras which could help shed some light on the existence of water on the moon.

A modified (rather upgraded) PSLV launch vehicle will be used to transport the probe to the lunar orbit. Due to the modifications, the PSLV C-11 will have a lift-off weight of 316 tonnes, which is much higher than the "standard" 294-ton version. Additionally, the payload capacity too has been increased from 1600 kg to 1800 kg. The PSLV has been the most successful launch vehicle for ISRO till date. It also holds the record for sending as many as 10 satellites simultaneously during its last mission. This time round, it is all set to break its own record by carrying 11 different payloads.

Undoubtedly, the Indian space program has come a long way since its initial stages when the first rocket transporter happened to be a bicycle, which carried the 9 kilo rocket to the "launch pad"! That was back in 1963 when visionaries like Vikram Sarabhai and APJ Abdul Kalam laid the foundation of what has become one of the greatest success stories of India.

Helium Leak Shuts Down LHC For Two Months...

2008-09-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

After last week’s transformer failure, a new hardware malfunction has stopped the LHC dead in its tracks. This time, the electrical link between two of the particle accelerator’s massive 30-ton superconducting magnets has failed, causing a magnet quench event. Due to having to warm up the section of the tunnel containing the magnet in order to conduct repairs, and then cool it back down to its -271°C operating temperature, these repairs will take at least two months.

Technical setbacks have plagued the Large Hadron Collider ever since it was started on September the 10th, including a transformer failure which shut down its cooling plant, which was only repaired on Thursday. Immediately afterwards, on Friday, during a test, one of the bus bar connections which linked cables between the magnets failed, and melted thus causing roughly a ton of liquid helium to leak into one of the tunnel sections. The fire brigade had to be called to handle the situation. "It seems to be a badly made connection – but this all has to be confirmed once we have had the chance to take a look at it," said James Gillies, director of communications at CERN.

The rather large dipole magnets that are used to steer protons around the Large Hadron Collider’s circular tract, are superconductive. What this means is that scientists have taken advantage of a property of matter by which its electrical resistance is lowered to naught when cooled very close to absolute zero. This allows much more current to be passed through the magnets, giving them much more force in steering the supercharged particles, which can run at up to 7 terra-electron-volts.

Non-superconductive magnets simply would not be strong enough to handle the proton beams, which would steer off-track, hitting the collider pipe walls. These particles, at such energy levels, can melt through several feet of steel in nanoseconds, so you don’t want those out of control.

Getting the magnets to and out of such low temperatures however – colder than outer space – takes a while however, and were it not required to use superconducting magnets, the repairs would only take a few days. This way, it will at least take two months, dangerously narrowing the window of opportunity in which to conduct the collision tests. This is because the LHC facility shuts down during the winter to save on energy costs. If they don’t get the problem fixed by then, there won’t be any collision until 2009.

CERN physicists are not very worried though, and are calling this an expected setback as the LHC, which is arguably the most complex machine ever built, has been in construction for 20 years and has so far cost more than $8 billion, and such hitches have been very probable since the beginning.

"If you keep an eye on the big picture, we've been building the machine for 20 years. The switch-on was always going to be a long process," said Gillies, who went on to say that "A year or two down the line, this moment will be a distant memory, and we'll be running smoothly."

The LHC’s Gala Inauguration party, set for October 21, will still take place, according to Dr. Gillies.

Android Era Set To Begin...

2008-09-22T15:16:00.001-07:00

When Google unveiled its Android mobile software platform last November, it was clear that the search giant had broader ambitions than just a gPhone.

The Linux-based open source platform and the Google (NSDQ: GOOG)-backed Open Handset Alliance are seeking to merge the openness of the Internet with the mobile space. These lofty goals potentially make Android a major disruption in the mobile communications industry. However, multiple questions remain.

One thing for certain, T-Mobile will officially announce the first Android-powered handset Sept. 23. While details aren't official, FCC filings suggest the Dream (or G1) will sport a large touch-screen that flips out to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard.

The smartphone is expected to have built-in Wi-Fi, GPS, and will be capable of using T-Mobile's expanding 3G network. It's expected to be on sale in mid-October, and the handset will undoubtedly have an entire industry watching it.

Google's Dream


Android Market's open content distribution system will help users find, purchase, download, and install content onto their Android-powered devices.

For Google, Android is all about getting mobile users on the Internet where the search giant can use its expertise to provide a better user experience. The operating system is royalty-free so hardware manufacturers can potentially spend their money on better hardware or on research and development.

Additionally, Google wants to make it easier for mobile users to download and add applications to their mobile devices like they can on a PC. The open-source nature will potentially allow others to improve the software, like with the desktop Linux.

Strategy Analytics predict the Android smartphone will capture 4% of the U.S. smartphone market in the fourth quarter. This represents about 400,000 units sold, and it is a healthy figure considering the handset's not expected to go on sale until the middle of the quarter.

According to Chris Ambrosio, executive director of Strategy Analytics, the Dream's price point will be an important factor of adoption, and The Wall Street Journal recently reported the first Android handset will debut for $199.

Ambrosio said there appears to be a large level of interest within the industry, but the mass-market appeal is currently lacking. That should change after T-Mobile's official announcement, as the carrier will probably put great efforts to market the first Android-powered handset.

Jason Spero, VP of marketing for AdMob, said there hasn't been a clear marketing push for Android. Despite recent crossover, Spero said the BlackBerry is primarily marketed as the best for the mobile workforce, and the iPhone is marketed as a consumer device.

"It's important for the group of people delivering Android devices to articulate a value proposition for a core audience," Spero said.

Despite this, analyst firm Gartner recently estimated Android will account for 10% of the smartphone market by 2011. But, analysts said the first generation of devices may not capture the public's interest like an iPhone.

"The G1 is the first device coming to market supporting Google's operating system Android," said Roberta Cozza, Gartner's principal analyst, in a statement. "Although this will give us a taste of what the platform will be able to do, we are expecting some limitations given this is the first device."
While the Android OS will eventually be on a slew of devices from Sprint, LG and Samsung, it's inevitable that the Dream will be compared to Apple's iPhone.
This comparison is not exactly fair as every aspect of the iPhone was developed primarily by a single company, whereas the Dream's hardware was made by HTC, and its software comes from more than one OHA members.

Even though it has similar features, the Dream probably won't offer the same "wow" factor that the iPhone did, industry experts said. But as popular as the iPhone is, it still accounts for a relatively small percentage of the overall handset market.

Shawn Bohonos, CEO of Routeme2 Technologies, recently saw his application named a finalist in Google's Android Developer's Challenge. He said the platform and the industry consortium will lead to innovation in the mobile arena.

"A similar comparison is the CDMA vs. GSM debate, when initially CDMA was able to innovate more quickly than GSM since it was developed by a small group of companies," Bohonos said. "GSM, on the other hand was developed by a consortium, which did not yield itself to rapid development, but over time, it was able to achieve better economies of scale and adoption than CDMA, thereby driving end user costs down."

Applications

The success of Apple's App Store, which is on pace for a billion downloads sometime in 2009, has shown the hunger for mobile applications. These mobile programs will be a critical driver in adoption of Android devices.

But Google is taking a different approach to the distribution of these apps, and its Android Marketplace will have fewer restrictions than Apple's. For example, Apple pre-approves all applications in its store and takes a 30% cut of any sold. Google said its Android Market will feature a YouTube-like system for publishing, distributing, and commenting on apps, and the search giant won't take any of the revenue.

Some developers are already praising Google for its open approach with both the market, and its SDK.

"The fact that Android apps can be developed in Java means that existing Java ME applications are easier to port to Android than to the iPhone, since code can be reused, whereas for the iPhone it needs to be rewritten in another language," said Bohonos. "Thus, the barrier to entry of Android has dramatically reduced the skills required to get up and running on mobile devices."

Ambrosio said the debate over a closed or open distribution method is not as important as the support offered and the interest it can generate for your brand. Because of this, he sees the Android Market as critical to Google because it enables them to tie their online offerings to mobile.

"Apple is much more into selling boxes," said Ambrosio. "For Google, more than any single handset or device, it's important to get the app store right."

The Android platform seems squarely aimed at the consumer market, but some figure it could eventually be Google strongest move into the enterprise market.

As more companies rely on Web-based mission-critical software, Ambrosio sees Google's strengths in that area as a major advantage for Android devices. But he expects Google to target the consumer market first, and eventually make a strong push for the enterprise.

A recent study by J. Gold Associates suggests that most companies will take a wait-and-see approach with Android, though.

The report said Research In Motion (NSDQ: RIMM) will remain the dominant player in the United States for enterprise smartphones, with nearly 60% of the market in 2011. This will be followed by Windows Mobile, Apple's iPhone, Symbian, and Palm. The report estimated Android will garner a relatively small 4.8% of the market in three years.

A Crowded Market

Cracking the mobile market won't be easy, as companies like RIM, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Apple won't give up their market share without a fight. Many companies are emphasizing their experience in the mobile space as Nokia, the largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world, recently upped the ante in the software war by buying out Symbian in June and creating the SymbiaFoundation with the goal of making Symbian an open source OS. Executives believe the company's "mobile DNA" will enable the OS to remain dominant.

"I think that the fact there is a mature platform that is being introduced in an open source environment kind of changes the game," said David Rivas, head of technology management atNokia (NYSE: NOK)'s S60, in an interview with Reuters. "The choices up until then were: You could go with proprietary and mature, or you could go with immature and free. Now there is a choice that is free and mature."

he Last Microsoft Ad Strategy: The Disco Mom...

2008-09-22T15:16:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has morphed its weird Gates-Seinfeld ads into new, "I'm a PC" ads--short video clips submitted by the general public, each saying what they do and telling the world that they are a PC. This is a direct attack on Apple's "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads, where the two characters symbolize the platforms.

These dingbat Microsoft ads kind of miss the point. The people don't symbolize anything. They say who they are and that they are a PC, which makes no sense whatsoever because they are not PCs. They are people. They use a PC, but they are NOT a PC, unless they are mentally deranged.

he differences between the Apple and Microsoft campaigns actually aren't so subtle, but this seems lost on Microsoft. Apple uses humans in a kind of transmogrified sense to represent the two platforms and speak for them in a way unflattering to Microsoft. Microsoft finds happy users who are willing to say they are a PC for no apparent reason.

This is dumb. That said, a friend of mine thinks it is brilliant, because anytime you engage the public by exploiting the public itself, you always have a winner. People love to see themselves on TV, and Microsoft promises that they will.

I'm not convinced, since only a few hundred at most will get in on these ditties, and it amounts to very little effect overall. And I notice that on the main page Microsoft has duplicates already. Two Ballmers are clearly seen with duplicates all around him. So the whole thing is something of a scam from the beginning.

I did notice something curious in my own behavior, however. I was clicking on some of the people and stumbled upon some shapely woman standing in a bikini saying that she was a Disco Mom. I'm not sure what that means, but she was attractive and worth looking at. A few of the other women were compelling enough to click on, too. This told me that the site is boring except for the possibility of spotting a pretty girl. "That's it!" I thought to myself. The never-fails, find-a-pretty-girl trick.

Just line the Web site with the prettiest girls you can find, all extolling the virtues of the PC and what it does. You know, the really shallow crap Playboy traditionally promotes in its centerfold profiles. Dumb "who really cares?" stuff.

I can assure you that the first "I'm a PC and I'm a stripper!" will get some serious attention. Let's see, Microsoft can make hay with the aerobics instructor, yoga instructor, second-grade teacher, Ellen Feiss (beep-beep-beep-beep), every B-movie actress in Hollywood, singers, dancers, and even showgirls! Just go for the cheesecake; Vista will fly off the shelves and the stock will skyrocket. People will click like crazy, watching all the advertisements to see what new hubba-hubba girl will appear next.

Now, if there were some way to take this idea over the top, here is my suggestion for the furtherance of the campaign and the cheesecake idea: Find the hottest women who will submit videos. And to balance things, find a few guys, too. They end up on the TV commercial, say that they are a PC, and give out their phone number. "I'm a Vegas showgirl and I'm a PC. Call me at my number (flashes on screen) for more information about me."

A computerized phone system answers all the inbound calls and the showgirl (or Disco Mom or whomever you called) answers the phone with a recording. "Hi, I'm Rhonda the Vegas showgirl and I'm a PC. I'm 5' 11" tall, 135 pounds, and my measurements are 36-24-36…and I love being a PC. In fact I'm just crazy about being a PC, and I make sure I'm always up-to-date with the newest software from Microsoft. You should, too. You really should! If you want a special offer from me to you, just press 1 on your touch-tone phone…." It can go on like this with all sorts of come-ons and follow ups.

Microsoft can sell upgrades, get people on the mailing list—whatever. This is direct sales at its best. Right now on that Microsoft ad site there is zero incentive to even click the Buy or Downloads button at the top. Most people won't even see them unless coaxed to look.

The company has a potential goldmine here if it cares to exploit it. But that wouldn't be politically correct, would it? Actually, I think the Disco Mom will be the end of it. But the gold is there to be mined.