Just Know It_ragavan

1 WHAT IS HAM RADIO? What is Ham Radio? It is a popular hobby in which an individual operates his or her own radio station. Though no one knows the exact origin of the term „ham‟, some believe it is formed from the first letters of radio pioneers Hertz, Ampere and Marconi! An amateur radio operator is known as a „ham‟. Hams mainly communicate with other hams around the world using international Morse code or voice. The basic equipment required is a radio transmitter and receiver, antenna and power supply. Many hams build their own stations because they feel it is part of the hobby. Others buy or import the equipment. Nowadays computers are used to transmit and receive messages in binary code. Anyone aged 12 years and above can become a ham. He has to obtain a licence. To obtain a licence hams have to pass the examination conducted by the Wireless Planning and Co-ordination Wing of the Indian govt‟s Department of Telecommunications. The Amateur Station Operator‟s Certificate (ASOC) examination has practical and written sections. The practical exam tests a ham‟s ability to send and receive Morse code at so many words per minute (WPM). The WPM is different for different grades.

Hams use call signs to identify themselves. The sign is a combination of alphabets and numerals. There are two parts of a call sign, the prefix and suffix. The prefix identifies the country the ham belongs to and the suffix identifies the operator. For instance, in the call sign, VU2HNN, VU stands for India and 2HNN is the name of the operator, in this case, Navin. An international call book is available which lists the call signs of hams around the world. Hams cannot broadcast tot the public, that is, transmit music or any other programme. They are most valuable during emergencies especially natural disasters like earthquakes, cyclones and storms. When normal communication links between the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and mainland India were snapped during the disastrous tsunami of December 2004, a ham, Bharati Prasad (vu2RBI) who happened to be in the Andamans at that time played a pivotal role in relaying information from Port Blair to the mainland and to other parts of the World. [On 26 December at 6.29 am, Bharati Prasad alerted the world with one word, “Tremors” before her radio went dead]

HAM FACTS ☼ First Indian ham: Amarendra Chandra Gooptu who received his licence in 1921 ☼ Country with highest number of hams: Japan with more than 1.5 million ☼ Ham radio is the only hobby recognized by the United Nations **** AMAZING LANGUAGE FACTS ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

There are more than 2,700 languages in the world. In addition, there are more than 7,000 dialects. A dialect is a regional variety of a language that has a different pronunciation, vocabulary, or meaning. The most difficult language to learn is Basque, which is spoken in northwestern Spain and southwestern France. It is not related to any other language in the world. It has an extremely complicated word structure and vocabulary. All pilots on international flights identify themselves in English. Somalia is the only African country in which the entire population speaks the same language, Somali. The language in which government conducts business is the official language of that country. More than 1,000 different languages are spoken on the continent of Africa. The Berbers of North Africa have no written form of their language. Many languages in Africa include a “click” sound that is pronounced at the same time as other sounds. You must learn these languages in childhood to do it properly.

Source: THE HINDU, Jan 28, 2005, Fun Track – Page.4. ☼

**** At present, out of six crore domain names worldwide, less than 7,000 have „.in‟ suffix. In IT terminology, „.in‟ is India‟s allocated country code top level domain (ccTLD).

Source: THE HINDU, Oct 29, 2004, Page.7.

2 EL NINO CHANGES EARTH‟S SHAPE The earth‟s shape changes because the climate events shift where the mass of water is stored: in oceans, continents and the atmosphere.

Oscillation is a long-term temperature fluctuation in the Pacific Ocean. Changes in the location of the cold and warm water masses that also alter the path of the jet stream, which moves storms around the world are brought about by the oscillation.

Significant changes in the shape of the earth in the past 28 years may be linked to climate events such as the El Nino# weather pattern.

Resulting in slight but detectable changes of the earth‟s gravity field, these changes redistribute water mass among the oceans, and water vapour in the atmosphere, and in soil on the continents.

Using nearly 30 years of NASA satellite laser ranging (SLR) data Dr. Minkang Cheng and Dr. Byron D. Tapley of the University of Texas at Austin‟s Center for Space Research examined how much the earth flattens at the poles and widens at the equator.

UNRESOLVED MYSTERY The Texas scientists also found that another change in mass my have started in late 2002, which coincides with the moderate El Nino that developed at that time. But the cause of a variation in the earth‟s shape over a 21-year period between 1978 and 2001, however, still remains a mystery.

They looked at events like El Nino – Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation that affect the amount of water moving in the oceans, atmosphere and continents around the world. Two large variations of increases in the earth bulging at the equator were connected to the strong El Nino – Southern Oscillation events from 1986 – 1991 and 1996 – 2002, the scientists found.

They used the NASA SLR data, which measured the distance from ground stations to satellites by using satellite lasers that are accurate within a millimeter.

EL NINO EFFECT

The SLR data reflected mass changes as water was redistributed around the world and resulted in the changes of earth‟s gravity field.

Although El Nino is normally associated with warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, it also causes changes in weather patterns and the way the ocean circulates. Heavy rains associated with the warmer waters move into the central Pacific Ocean and typically cause drought in Australia, and floods in Peru during an El Nino. That is, there is less water in Australia, more water in Peru.

The long-term history of these range measurements makes it possible for scientists to see how the large-scale mass was redistributed around the world, and the long-period and secular changes in the melting of glaciers and polar ice sheets and the associated sea level change.

Similar to El Nino, but lasting 20 to 30 years instead of months, the Pacific Decadal

of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth.

The study was published in the Journal

# It is a Spanish word which means that Child Jesus. (THE HINDU, Oct 10, 2004, Page 4.) Source: THE HINDU, Jan 13, 2005, Page.15. ☼

**** The present forest and tree cover in the country according to the State of Forest Report 2001 of the Forest Survey of India is 23.03 per cent.

Source: THE HINDU, Oct 10, 2004, Page.16. The Food Corporation of India (FCI) is procuring through the Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Corporation (TNCSC), which is acting as the FCI‟s agent under the decentralized procurement policy. Source: THE HINDU, Oct 31, 2004, Page.1.

**** At present, the FCI has been procuring paddy with 17% moisture content. Following the rain, the moisture content went up to 22 to 25%. Paddy with high moisture content is rejected at the Direct Purchase Centers of the TNCSC.

3 ABOUT BEETHOVEN – THE GREAT MUSICAL COMPOSER In Germany, Bonn - which is the birthplace of Beethoven. In fact they often call Bonn the “Beethoven City” (“Beethovenstadt”). There is a life-size statue of the composer in the center of the city, just opposite the main post office. Apparently Queen Victoria herself was invited to the unveiling ceremony of the statue. Ludwig van Beethoven was born in a small, two-storeyed house in the central part of the city. Which has now become a museum. One cannot make out that the house is a few hundred years old, as it has been maintained very well (unlike the birthplaces of famous figures in our country). The room in which he was born is empty except for a bust. It is a small room on the second floor, with tiny windows. The museum has a number of things used by Beethoven, like his shaving kit and his spectacles,

as well as the horns he used to put on his ears to try to listen. There is a big piano with all its legs cut off. When he was on the verge of total deafness, Beethoven cut its legs off out of frustration, so that he could kneel down to put his ears on the floor to try to hear a bit of sound. It remains a mystery to me how an aurally challenged person could conjure up the compositions that have enthralled people for centuries. Bonn hosts an annual festival celebrating the music of Beethoven, where performers and orchestras from all over the world come to play his music. The main auditorium in the city, aptly called “Beethovenhalle”, is a lovely piece of architecture, with a large bust in the lawns in front of it.

Source: THE HINDU, Sep 05, 2004, Magazine – Page.7. **** INDIA‟S POPULATION India‟s population has reached 102.8 crores with 53.2 crore males and 49.6 crore females at an annual growth rate of 1.94. India turned 100 crores in May 2000. The 2001 census shows Uttar Pradesh to be the most populous state with a population of 166 million, followed by Maharashtra (97 million), Bihar (83 million) and West Bengal (80 million). Lakshadweep has the lowest population of 61,000.

The Scheduled Caste population has touched 16.6 crores (16.2 per cent) and the Scheduled Tribes 8.4 crores (8.2 per cent). The child sex ratio (0 - 6) slipped from 945 females per 1000 males in 1991 to 927 in 2001. The average literacy rate for above seven populations stood at 64.8 against 52.2 in 1991. The census said 75.2 per cent of the male populations against 53.6 per cent of females are literate.

Source: THE HINDU, Jul 11, 2004, Page.1.

**** VICTORIA TERMINUS IN BOMBAY

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the erstwhile Victoria Terminus, in Mumbai, as a World Heritage Building – F.M. Stevens designed the Victorian masterpiece and its construction

started in 1878 and completed in 1888. The building displays an important interplay of influences from Victorian Italian Gothic revival architecture and the Indian architecture.

Source: THE HINDU, Feb 03, 2005, Page.7. ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

**** December 22 in southern pole the sun does not set but in June 21 the sun does not dawn. December 22 in northern pole the sun does not dawn but in June 21 the sun does not set. December 22 is the largest daytime and June 21 is the lowest daytime in our earth. March 21 and September 23 these two days are equal time in day and night.

Source: DAILY THANTHI, Oct 09, 2004, Elainjar Malar - Page.15. ☼

**** UNESCO has declared Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland and venue of UK‟s biggest annual literary festival, the World‟s first “City of Literature”.

Source: DAILY THANTHI, Oct 09, 2004, Elainjar Malar - Page.15.

4 Mahatma Gandhi‟s grandson Arun Gandhi, who runs the Mahatma Gandhi International Peace Institute in the United States. The former Botswana President, Sir Ketumile Masire, has been honoured with the Mahatma Gandhi International Peace Award for trying to promote peace and reconciliation in the African continent. Sir Masire is the second African leader to be bestowed with the Gandhi Peace Award since it was introduced last year (2003). President Thabo Mbeki received it last year. Source: THE HINDU, Dec 05, 2004, Page.9. **** Out of 40,000 MW generated through harnessing wind energy globally, Germany alone produces 16,000 MW followed by Spain, which generates 9,000 MW. The US and Denmark respectively produce 7,000 MW and 3,500 MW. India was the fifth largest producer, which generates about 3,000 MW of wind energy. This amounted to about 2% of total electricity generated in India. Rajasthan was one state, which is doing a good job in harnessing wind power. Source: THE HINDU, Dec 16, 2005, Page.1. **** CAVEAT EMPTOR means „buyers beware‟ (or) when you buy something, it is your responsibility to ensure that everything is fine. Source: THE HINDU, Jan 04, 2005, Page.17. The mystery of the sea or ocean was that it would never retain any dead bodies or carcasses for more than 24 hours, and would automatically space them and wash them ashore. And the on-land viruses and bacteria would not survive in the saline water. Source: THE HINDU, Jan 03, 2005, Page.5. TSUNAMI The Great Sumatra earthquake was the second largest quake ever recorded and such an occurance does not happen frequently. There are only two “tsunamigenic” zones in the Indian Ocean region capable of producing tsunamis the Java – Sumatra region in the eastern part of the Indian Ocean and the

Makaran region / Gulf of Kutch on ht e northern edge of the Arabian Sea. Unlike the Pacific Ocean region, where the occurance of tsunamis is more frequent, the Indian Ocean region does not have such a track record. Against 900 tsunamis recorded by the former last century, only five or six happened in the later.

Source: THE HINDU, Mar 16, 2005, Page.1.

**** Tsunami (pronounced tsoonahmee) is a Japanese word, which means, “harbour wave”. Tsu means harbour and nami stands for wave. Tsunamis are large waves that are generated when the sea floor is deformed by seismic activity, vertically displacing the overlying water in the Ocean. Throughout recorded history, tsunamis have caused significant damage to coastal communities all over the world. Source: THE HINDU, Dec 27, 2004, Page.1. **** John Schwartz points out in The New York Timers, that 75%of tsunami warnings in 56 years have been wrong. He quotes a NASA website devoted to tsunami as saying “Three out of four tsunami warnings issued since 1948 have been false”. The January 17, 1995, Kobe earthquake in Japan took 5,500 lives, injured 26,000 and inflicted damage in excess of $200 billion. That in a country where seismic activity is massively monitored with advanced technologies. The quake lasted some 20 seconds and measured around 7.0 on the Richter scale. Structures designed for such seismic zones were torn apart like paper. Last week‟s (26/12/04) quake measured 9.0 which means it was, near Indonesia at least, 1,000 times more powerful than Kobe. (The Richter scale is a logarithmic one, not a linear scale). Source: THE HINDU, Jan 01, 2005, Page.12.

5 Studies show that the sudden slip of the Indian plate over the Burmese plate created an upward thrust along the pre-existing fault about 1,000 km in the north-south direction. The area involved in the generation of the tsunami was 2,80,000 – 3,00,000 sqkm of the ocean floor, extending from 3 – 10 degrees north and 88 – 100 degrees east. The large-scale displacement of submarine seafloor both vertically and horizontally was due to the direct impact of the “great earthquakes”. The maximum rise along the subduction zone where the Burmese plate moved over the Indian plate was 5 meters. In the western edge of the Sumatra, the land dropped to a maximum of one meter below the sea level. It has been reported that the greatest horizontal motion on the ocean floor was 11 meters and the coast of Sumatra moved 3 meters and Simeulue Island, which is very close to the epicenter moved 2 meters horizontally.

The shift of mass and the massive energy release due to the earthquake of the magnitude of 9 triggered tsunamis that struck the coast of 11 countries. The total energy released by the recent earthquake with the magnitude of 9 is equivalent to 32,000 Mega tones of trinitrotoluene (TNT). Just imagine that the great earthquake of Dec.26, 2004 has released the amount of energy equivalent to 24,96,000 Hiroshima bombs. (5 Mega tones of TNT is equivalent to 390 Hiroshima bombs). Surprisingly, Simeulue, an Island in the eye of the epicenter, escaped the wrath, though the waves traveled 5,000 km and hit the coast of Somalia in Africa. This proved the point that propagation of the tsunami waves was more important than the distance.

Source: THE HINDU, Jan 18, 2005, Page.5. TO WATCH AND WARN Most tsunamis occur in the Pacific because the Ring of Fire, a long chain of the earth‟s most seismically active spots, rims the ocean basin. Marine geologist recently determined that under certain conditions, the US East Coast and other heavily populated coastlines also could be vulnerable. In a tsunami, waves typically radiate out in directions opposite from the seismic disturbance. In the case of the Sumatra quake, the seismic fault ran north to south beneath the ocean floor, while the tsunami waves shot out west and east. Tsunamis are distinguished from normal coastal surf by their great length and speed. A single wave in a tsunami series might be 160 km long and race across the ocean at 965 kmph. When it approaches a coastline, the wave slows dramatically, but it also rises to great heights because the enormous volume of water piles up in shallow coastal bays. And unlike surf, which is generated by wind and the gravitational tug of the moon and other celestial bodies, tsunamis do not break on the coastline every few seconds. Because of their size, it might take an hour for another one to arrive. Some tsunamis appear as a tide that does not stop rising, while others are turbulent Source: THE HINDU, Dec 28, 2004, Page.22.

and savagely chew up the coast. Without instrumentation, so little is known about this tsunami that researchers must wait for eyewitness accounts to determine its characteristics. In the hours following an earthquake, tsunamis eventually lose their power to friction over the rough ocean bottom or simply as the waves spread out over the ocean‟s enormous surface. The International Warning System was started in 1965, the year after tsunamis associated with a magnitude 9.2 temblor struck Alaska in 1964. It is administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The warning system analyses earthquake information from several seismic networks, including the U.S. Geological Survey. The seismic information is fed into computer models that “picture” how and where a tsunami might form. It dispatches warnings about imminent tsunami hazards. Member states include all the major Pacific rim nations in North America, Asia and South America, was as well as the Pacific islands, Australia and New Zealand. It also includes France, which has sovereignty over some Pacific islands.

6 In 1883, August 27, 36,000 people were killed by tsunamis following the explosion of the volcano Krakatau in the Sunda Strait near Java. Following the 1883 eruption, waves estimated as high as 27 metres slammed ashore on nearby islands, wiping out coastal communities in what is now Indonesia. They had been the deadliest tsunamis of modern times until now. The earliest description of a tsunamitype wave comes from 479 B.C. in the northern part of the Aegean Sean. Similar waves have been reported worldwide, though they are more common in the Pacific, with its earthquake-prone perimeter. Santorini Eruption Many historians believe that the explosive eruption of Santorini in the Aegean Sea in 1500 B.C. caused a tsunami that brought widespread devastation to the eastern Mediterranean and Crete. Thousands of coastal residents in Spain, Portugal and North Africa were killed by waves spawned by an earthquake at Lisbon, Portugal, in 1755. Over the centuries, Japan has been the land most plagued by tsunamis, with at least 66,000 deaths recorded there since A.D. 684.

Among the deadliest tsunamis was one that struck Honshu, Japan, in 1896, killing an estimated 27,000. Indonesia has seen more than 50,000 deaths in more than 30 destructive tsunamis over the centuries – not including the most recent disaster (Dec 26 Deadly Tsunami in 2004). On April 1, 1946, a Pacific wide tsunami was generated by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake near Unimak Island chain. A huge wave destroyed the US Coast Guard‟s Scotch Cap lighthouse on Unimak, killing all five of its occupants. The lighthouse was s steel-reinforced concrete structure standing about 27 m above sea level. The tsunami reached the Hawaiian Islands about five hours later, obliterating Hilo‟s waterfront and killing 159 people. Altogether, 165 people died, including children attending school at Hawaii‟s Laupahoehoe Point where waves reaching up to 7.6 m struck. As a result of this wave, two years later the US established a Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii.

Other Tsunami Hits Other notable tsunamis have included:  August 16, 1976: A tsunami generated by a quake on Mindinao in the Phillippines killed between 5,000 and 8,000 people in the Moro Gulf region. 

March 28, 1964: A magnitude 8.4 quake in Alaska generated tsunamis that caused damage in southeastern Alaska, in Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and in the states of Washington, California and Hawaii. More than 120 died. Hardest hit was Crescent City, California, where waves reaching as much as 6 m destroyed half of the waterfront business district. Eleven people lost their lives there. There was extensive damage in San Francisco Bay and at the marinas in Marin County and at the Noyo, Los Angeles and Long Beach harbours.

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May 22, 1960: The largest earthquake – magnitude 8.6 – of the 20th century occurred off the coast of south central Chile. It generated a Pacific-wide tsunami, which was destructive locally in chile and throughout the Pacific Ocean. The tsunami killed an estimated 2,300 people in Chile. Waves damaged the waterfront in Hilo, Hawaii, and killed 61 people.

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November 4, 1952: A strong earthquake off the coast of Russia‟s Kamchatka Peninsula generated a great, destructive Pacific-wide tsunami. It waves struck the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Kuril Islands and other areas of Russia‟s Far East, causing considerable damage and loss of life. There was also damage in Hawaii, Peru and Chile.

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January 31, 1906: A strong tsunami struck the coast of Ecuador and Colombia, submerging half or Tumaco, Columbia, and washing away half of a nearby island. The death toll has been estimated at between 500 and 1,500.

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August 13, 1868: A massive wave struck Chile, carrying ships as far as 4.8 km inland at Arica. Deaths totaled 25,000 or more.

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April 2, 1868: A locally generated tsunami swept over the tops of palm trees and claimed 81 lives in Hawaii.

Source: THE HINDU, Dec 30, 2004, Page.22.

7 A table produced by the Nevada Seismological Laboratory suggests that a quake of 9.0 on the Richter scale has a seismic energy yield roughly equaling 32 billion tons of TNT (Tri Nitro Toluene). Compare that with the bomb that decimated Hiroshima, whose yield was similar to that from exploding 15,000 tons of TNT. The Indonesian quake last week (26/12/04), like the Chilean quake of 1960, unleashed 2.13 million times more energy than the perversely named “Little Boy” did over Hiroshima. Source: THE HINDU, Jan 01, 2005, Page.12.

**** Dead bodies themselves do not cause disease. Most viruses can only survive at temperatures of 38 C. Within an hour or so of death, there is little danger of infection even if the person has dies of an infectious disease. Source: THE HINDU, Dec 31, 2004, Page.14. **** TSUNAMI – EARTHQUAKE MAGNITUDE WAS 9.3 The earthquake that caused the deadly tsunami (Dec 26, 2004) was 3 times more powerful than previously reported, according to U.S. Geologist.

vibrations by which the earth rings like a bell (or more precisely rattles like a garbage can) for days and even weeks after such a gigantic earthquake.

Latest analysis of seismograms form the De 26 Sumatra earthquake has led to revision of its magnitude to 9.3 from the previously reported 9.0, scientists at Northwestern University reported. The revised value makes it second only to the 1960 Chile earthquake “and explains in part why the tsunami was so destructive”, said Seth Stein and Emile A. Okal of the Department of Geological Sciences.

U.S. scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have also revised the quake magnitude upward.

The additional energy released occurred by slow slip along the 1,200 km long fault delineated by aftershocks, making the rupture zone much larger than previously thought from analysis of shorter period waves, they wrote in their website.

He said the earthquake rupture zone consisted of a 450-600 km long southern segment, which radiated seismic waves that were recorded by seismogram stations worldwide; and a northern segment that is just as long as, or slightly longer than, the southern segment.

Because the entire rupture zone slipped, strain accumulated from subduction of the Indian plate beneath the Burma micro-plate has been released, leaving no immediate danger of a comparable tsunami being generated by an earthquake on this segment of the plate boundary

“This northern segment is associated with abundant aftershocks, but did not seem to have radiated short-period seismic waves as the southern segment did. Thus the best explanation is that this northern segment may have ruptured as a „slow‟ earthquake”, he added. “If the above interpretation is correct, the combined earthquake energy of the Dec 26, 2004 earthquake could be significantly larger than then short-period magnitude of 9.0”, he said.

They said these results come from analyzing the earth‟s normal modes – ultra long

“I think the earthquake rupture zone is almost certain to be much longer than what was suggested by the short-period seismogram recording”, said Jian Lin, a geophysicist at the WHOI.

Source: THE HINDU, Feb 11, 2005, Page.22. (Because of Tsunami) Aftershocks of reducing intensity can be expected to rattle the Andaman and Nicobar islands as they fall in the subduction zone. (A subduction zone is the place where one plate dives below another. In this case, the India plate dived below the Burma micro plate. The trench is the surface expression of this phenomenon. The subduction zone in this case is nearly 100 km in width and stretches from Sumatra to the Andaman group of islands. Source: THE HINDU, Jan 25, 2005, Page.12.

8 TSUNAMI WARNING SYSTEM By N. Gopal Raj A warning of an oncoming tsunami is more than a matter of detecting that an earthquake has occurred under or near an ocean. The experience in the Pacific Ocean, where most tsunamis happen, is that a number of complex steps have to be completed rapidly so that people can be evacuated to safer locations. Yet the system must also be robust enough to avoid false alerts, which would unnecessarily disrupt people‟s lives, cause substantial financial loss and ultimately lead to a loss of confidence in the system. Unlike in the Pacific where over 790 tsunamis have been recorded since 1900, Sunday‟s tsunami (Dec 26, 2004) was just the second to hit India during the same period. The first tsunami to reach the Indian mainland in the last 100 years was in 1941. Before that, a tsunami was recorded in December 1881. Moreover, not every earthquake under or near the ocean causes a tsunami. About a dozen earthquakes of over magnitude 5 on the Richter scale have occurred in the vicinity of the Andaman and Nicobar islands since 1973, including two greater than magnitude 6. According to officials of the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa, no tsunamis followed. The magnitude 9 earthquake off Sumatra, which caused Sunday‟s tsunami, set off several earthquakes in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, including one that exceeded magnitude 7. None of these later earthquakes is known to have caused tsunamis that reached the Indian mainland. In 1965, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), established the International Tsunami Information Center (ITIC) in Hawaii. Three years later, the IOC formed an International Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific, with 26 countries in an around the Pacific as its members. The system issues tsunami information and warnings to over 100 places scattered across the Pacific. Three distinct but overlapping physical processes have to be modeled accurately in order to understand whether an earthquake could have set off a tsunami and then to identify the places at risk. At the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) in Hawaii, computer systems continually monitor data from seismic stations in the United States and abroad, and alert watch-standers whenever a significant earthquake has been detected, says Charles McCreery in a recent issue of the Tsunami Newsletter. “If the earthquake is shallow and is located under or very close to the sea, and if its magnitude exceeds a predetermined threshold, a warning is issued based on there being the potential that a destructive tsunami was generated”. Such computation is based on 30 to 50 independent measurements and, as Dr.McCreery points out, the PTWC‟s performance improved rapidly as high-quality seismic data from more seismic stations in the US and other countries became available in real time. The time the PTWC needed to issue a warning fell from up to 90 minutes six years ago to the present level of 25 minutes or less. It is reported that there are about 200 seismic observatories in the country under various organizations. The India Meteorological Department has some 58 seismic stations under it, only 17 of which are digital and networked. More Indian seismic stations must be networked so that their data immediately become available for analysis, says Kusala Rajendran of the Centre for Earth Science Studies in Thiruvananthapuram. At least 10 parameters about the fracture in the earth‟s crust that caused the earthquake are needed to predict the tsunami‟s initial height, according to Frank Gonzalez, Tsunami Research Program Leader at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). As only the orientation of the fracture and the quake‟s location, magnitude and depth can be obtained from the seismic data, all the other parameters must be estimated, he said in a 1999 article in the Scientific American. Consequently, the tsunami‟s height can be initially misjudged. Computer models can then simulate how the tsunami would propogate in the deep ocean, also taking into account how underwater ridges and mounds would affect the wave. Although the tsunami could be traveling faster than a passenger jet, the wave may be only a few metres high. As a single wave can be more than 750 km long, the slope is so gentle that a tsunami can pass by unnoticed in the ocean. After the first indication that an earthquake may have triggered a tsunami, “it is necessary to wait until a potential tsunami reaches the nearest sea level gauge to confirm or deny its existence and begin to evaluate its character”, says Dr. McCreery. There are currently about a hundred such gauges around the

9 Pacific, most of which can transmit their data via satellite back to the warning centres. But as these gauges are typically located in the harbours and protected bays, the characteristics of the tsunami would be greatly modified by the shallow depth. That severely limits the usefulness of the data from the gauges, according to Dr. Mc.Creery. Consequently, the NOAA developed the „Deep Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis‟ (DART) gauge. Each DART gauge has a highly sensitive pressure recorder installed on the ocean floor. From a depth of 6 km, the recorder is capable of detecting if the height of the ocean above it changes by just one cm. This data is transmitted acoustically to a surface buoy that then relays it over satellite to the warning centre. Seven DART gauges have already been deployed, and at least four more are being planned. The DART gauges are sited in deep water so that they can accurately record the tsunami waves as they pass unaltered, remarks Dr. McCreery. As the tsunami approaches the shore and the depth decreases, the waves slow down but become higher. The last stage of evolution where the tsunami comes ashore as a breaking wave, a wall of water or a tide-like flood is perhaps the most difficult to model, according to Dr. Gonzalez. Wave heights can reach tens of metres, although waves two to there metres high are sufficient to cause damage. The NOAA has developed a suit of computer models, collectively known as the MOST (Method of Splitting Tsunami), which are capable of simulating the generation of a tsunami, its transoceanic propagation and inundation of dry land. But the NOAA also points out: “The current state-of-the art in tsunami modeling still requires considerable quality control, judgment and iterative, exploratory computations before a scenario is assumed to be reliable. This is why the efficient computation of many scenarios for the creation of a database of precomputed scenarios that have been carefully analysed and interpreted by a knowledgeable and experienced tsunami modeler is an essential first step in the development of a reliable and robust tsunami forecasting and hazard assessment capability”. In Japan too, “virtual tsunamis” have been pre-calculated for thousands of possible sources for various magnitudes of earthquake from 6.5 upwards. A supercomputer sorts these “virtual tsunamis” when an earthquake occurs and makes the extrapolations necessary when it does not correspond precisely to any one of them. Issuing a reliable warning is just the first step. It is then up to the civilian authorities to use the warning for evacuations. Plans have to be made and rehearsed so that all the agencies act quickly and in concert once an alert is issued. Sunday‟s tsunami (Dec 26, 2004) swept across the ocean and reached India in just two hours. Countries who currently receive international tsunami warnings have found that they do not have the emergency response capacity, and the necessary communications infrastructure. Hence even though a warning may be received, their coastal communities are still extremely vulnerable. Establishing a reliable and robust tsunami warning system for India is therefore a substantial undertaking. Many Indian seismic stations probably require upgradation and also need to be networked. The seismic station at Port Blair in the Andamans is, for instance, said to be of the old analog type. Sea-level gauges are needed and press reports say that the Government is looking at installing DART-type gauges. Simulation software that model the evolution of tsunamis from generation to landfall may need to be modified to suit the Indian situation. Hazard mapping to identify vulnerable areas would also probably be required. The satellite-based cyclone-warning system can be augmented for disseminating tsunami warning. Most important of all local-level plans have to be drawn up for evacuating people at short notice. Joining the international tsunami warning system will help, but even so there will be much that has to be done within the country. Source: THE HINDU, Dec 29, 2004, Page.10. **** TSUNAMI WARNING SYSTEM “FEASIBLE” The tsunami (Dec 26, 2005) was spawned by the most powerful earthquake in 40 years, which struck off the Indonesian coast an hour before the tsunami made landfall on that day. US officials tried frantically to warn the deadly wall of water was coming, but there was no official alert system in the region. Six “tsunametres” along the Pacific coastline, one near Chile and 14 off the Japanese coast now feed data to the US Pacific Tsunami Warning Centres in Hawaii and Alaska. Tsunami typically occur in Indian Ocean once a century.

10 Japan, for instance, has a network of sensors that record seismic data and feed information to a national agency able to issue evacuations warnings with in minutes of any quake. The international warning system was started back in 1965. The system is designed to alert nations of potentially destructive waves, which may hit coastlines within three to 14 hours. Seismic networks recorded Sunday‟s quake (Dec 26, 2005) but without wave sensors in the region – India and Sri Lanka are not members there was no way to determine the tsunami‟s direction. (If you want more details with chart – refer the Source.) Source: THE HINDU, Dec 29, 2004, Page.13. **** The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN has put the tsunami losses in fisheries and aquaculture at $520 million. Jeremy Turner, head of the FAO‟s Fishery Technology Service said, “The current estimate for direct losses in the fisheries sector is now around $520 million. The figures refer to only India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Thailand. As per the FAO‟s estimate, 1,11,073 fishing vessels were destroyed or damaged with an estimated replacement cost of $161 million; 36,235 engines were lost or damaged beyond repair with replacement costs projected at $73 million; 1.7 million units of fishing gear (net tackle and similar equipment) were destroyed with an estimated replacement cost of $86 million and the cost of repairs of other damages to the fisheries sector, such as to aquaculture operations, fishing industry infrastructure and harbours are estimated to be in excess of $200 million. Source: THE HINDU, Feb 20, 2005, Page.10.

**** Albert Einstein earned a Nobel Prize in 1921 for his work on photoelectric effect. He graduated from the Polytechnic school in Zurich. And he loved music and cycling. Many of the great breakthroughs of the past century – quantum theory, the computer revolution, nuclear power, lasers, space travel, and global positioning systems – can be put down to Einstein‟s genius. In 1933, Einstein escaped the persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany by accepting a position at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in the US where he spent the rest to his life. Source: THE HINDU, Jan 12, 2005, Page.20. ☼

Mathew Fontaine Maury – Father of Oceanography

Source: THE HINDU, Nov 20, 2004, Young World - Page.2. ☼

**** Charles Spencer Chaplin (Charlie Chaplin – notorious comedian) born at Walworth in England on Apr. 16, 1889 & he died at Corsier-sur-Vevey in Switzerland on Dec. 25, 1977.

Source: THE HINDU, Nov 20, 2004, Young World – Page.2. ICF – INTEGRAL COACH FACTORY ICF, Perambur, the country‟s premier railway coach-manufacturing unit, which was inaugurated on October 2, 1955 by the then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in Collaboration with the Swiss Car and Elevator Manufacturing Company of Switzerland, has come a long way in the past 49 years.

With a modest beginning of producing 35 shells in the first year, ICF is now capable of rolling out 1200 coaches as against its installed capacity of 1000 per annum. Now it produces 200 varieties of coaches ranging from ordinary second-class coach to the most luxurious tourist cars.

Source: THE HINDU, Nov 02, 2004, Page.5. The most famous pre-human, a skeleton nicknamed „Lucy‟, dates back just about 3 million years. Source: THE HINDU, Nov 29, 2004, Page.15.

****

11 According to the Director of National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development, Adarsh Sharma, Tamil Nadu has a women‟s literacy rate of 65%, which was 10 points higher than the national average. Source: THE HINDU, Dec 10, 2004, Page.1.

**** “Nearly 30% of vegetable production in India goes down the drain every year, owing to poor storage facilities and the value is estimated to be Rs.27,000 crores and the wasted quantity of vegetables in India was equal to the annual consumption of the UK”, the Dean of Agricultural College and Research Institute, N. Kempu Chetty. Source: THE HINDU, Dec 10, 2004, Page.3. in 1996.

**** Ian Wilmut, who led the team that created Dolly (first cloned animal) at Scotland‟s Roslin Institute

Source: THE HINDU, Feb 09, 2005, Page.20.

**** Nastaq has a total listing of 3296 companies, of which 65 are from the Asia-Pacific region, and 330 are from outside of the US. Source: THE HINDU, Dec 10, 2004, Page.17.

**** WORLD POST DAY October 9, 1874 that the Universal Postal Union (UPU) was founded in Berne. The day was declared the World Post Day be the UPU Congress held in Tokyo in 1969. In India, the Department of Posts will begin celebrations for the National Postal Week with the World Post Day and then the Business Development Day on October 11. Philately Day, Savings Bank Day, PLI Day and Mail Day will follow this from October 12 to 15. According to the UPU, five per cent of the populations in developing countries do not have postal coverage, and Africa is the worst off. Source: THE HINDU, Oct 09, 2004, Page.12.

FACTFINDER What is a blog? sites where you can create your own blog, A blog is short for an online journal or maintain it and even browse through other blogs. web log. It‟s an on-line diary where you put down your thoughts and write about your Each site has its own rules. At some experiences. You can write about anything you blog sites you are required to pay to create one want and whenever you want. You can even put however most are free. You have to first create photographs on the blog. You can choose to an account on the blog site just like you create keep the diary private, accessible only to you or your email account online and then follow the to share it with the world at large – make your simple instructions. You will then be asked life an open book, so to say. whether you want to make your blog public or private i.e. for your reading only or for others to How do create a blog? view as well. Creating a blog is very simple. All you have to do is log on to google.com and type in It‟s that easy. So register, start a blog “blogs” or “Weblogs”. You will then get several and see how it feels to write a diary on the World Wide Web. Some sites we can make or read a blog on: http://www.blogit.com/ http://www.joeuser.com/ https://www.typepad.com/ www.elle18.com http://www.speakpod.com/ www.rediff.com http://www.tag-board.com/ Source: THE HINDU, Sep 25, 2004, Young World - Page.4. ****

12 150 YEARS OF THE INDIAN POST OFFICE The Indian Post Office was recognized as a separate organization of national importance and was placed, for the first time, under the unitary control of a Director General on October 1, 1854. Today, India has the largest postal network in the world with 1,55,618 post offices ( as on March 2003), of these, 1,39,081 post offices are in rural areas. At the time of Independence, there were 23,344 post offices in India.

A look at how the Indian Postal Network compares with some other countries Countries

Population (million)

USA UK Germany Brazil South Africa Nigeria China Australia Japan Egypt India

284.8 59.5 82.4 172.4 44.3 116.9 1284.9 19.4 127.3 67.9 1027.0

Area (Lakh

Sq.Km) 93.72 2.44 3.57 85.12 12.21 9.24 95.96 77.13 3.78 10.01 32.88

Some Landmarks ☼ 1854: Post Office Act XVII introduced ☼ 1863: Railway Sorting ☼ 1873: Embossed envelopes on sale ☼ 1876: India joins Universal Postal Union ☼ 1877: VPP and Parcel service started ☼ 1879: Postcard introduced ☼ 1880: Money Order launched

No. of Post Offices 38,123 17,633 13,000 12,520 2,650 4,624 57,135 3,872 24,760 5,339 1,55,618 ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

People per Post Office 7,471 3,377 6,335 13,769 16,728 25,288 22,490 5,008 5,143 12,575 6,602

Service area per Post Office (Sq. Km) 245.85 13.84 27.46 679.87 460.77 199.78 167.97 1,992.09 15.26 185.49 21.13

1935: Indian Postal Order 1972: PIN introduced 1985: Post and Telecom departments separated 1986: Speed Post launched 2004: ePost introduced

Source: THE HINDU, Oct 01, 2004, Page.13. **** Ms. Wangari Maathai, who is the first African women to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and the 12 th women since it was first awarded in 1901. The Nobel Prizes are always presented on Oslo, while the other Nobel Prizes are awarded in the Swadish Capital of Stockholm. Source: THE HINDU, Dec 11, 2004, Page.14.

**** SCOUTS AND GUIDES Founded by Lord Baden Powell, an officer of the British Army, the Scout Movement is an international student‟s organization. Baden Powell was born on February 22, 1857, and Scouts and Guides the world over celebrate this day as “Thinking Day”. The aim of the scout movement is character development and their motto is “Be prepared”, to be achieved by being physically strong, mentally awake and morally upright. At the time of enrolment every scout takes a pledge saying, “On my honour, I promise that I will do my best – to do my duty to God and country, to help other people and to obey scout law”. Scouts are trained in many life-oriented skills and proficiency badges are awarded. They have examination to pass for which they are awarded the “President‟s Award”. The headquarters of the Bharat Scouts and Guides Association is at New Delhi. The highest national award is the “Silver Elephant Award”. Source: THE HINDU, Mar 04, 2005, Young World - Page.1.

13 ENERGY EFFICIENT DESALINATION TECHNOLOGY A technology that can tap waste heat from electrical power plants as its main source of energy has been developed, an advance that could significantly reduce the cost of desalination in some parts of the world. Desalination is often touted as one solution to the world‟s water woes, but current desalination plants tend to hog energy. University of Florida researchers have developed the technology. “In the future, we have to go to desalination, because the freshwater supply at the moment can just barely meet the demands of our growing population”, said James Klausner, a UF professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. “We think this technology could run off excess heat from utility plants and produce millions of gallons each day”, said Klausner, lead author of an article on the system that appeared in the Journal of Energy Resources Technology. He coinvented the technology with fellow UF mechanical engineering professor Renwei Mei. LESS COMMON IN U.S. More than 7,500 desalination plants operate worldwide, with two-thirds of them in the Middle East, where there often is no other alternative for fresh water, Klausner said. With plants located mostly in Florida and the Caribbean producing only about 12 percent of the world‟s total volume of desalinated water, the technology is less common in North America, he said. US residents get less than 1 percent of their water from desalination plants, he said.

more urgent in developing nations, such as China, Klausner said. WORLWIDE PROBLEM “China has large and growing demand, Japan has a large demand, the Middle East, SubSaharan Africa – I look at it as a worldwide problem”, he said. Most commercial desalination plants now use either distillation or reverse osmosis, Klausner said. Distillation involves boiling and evaporating salt water and then condensing the vapour to produce fresh water. In reverse osmosis, high-pressure pumps force salt water through fine filters that trap and remove waterborne salts and minerals. Boiling the vast amounts of water needed for the distillation process requires large amounts of energy. Reverse osmosis uses less energy but has other problems, including mineral build-up clogging the filters. That is the main technical issue plaguing the largest desalination plant in the US, Tampa Bay Water‟s $108 million plant in Apollo Beach. Although it was supposed to produce 25 million gallons of freshwater each day, the plant, beset by technical and financial problems since opening in 1999, currently is shut down. Klausner‟s technology relies on a physical process known as mass diffusion, rather than heat, to evaporate salt water, employing a major modification to distillation.

However, as the population increases and residents consume more fresh water, the need for desalination is likely to grow. In Florida, for example, desalination has been touted as one solution for metropolitan areas where freshwater resources are becoming ever more scarce. With more than 97 percent of the earth‟s water supply composed of salt water, desalination is even

In a nutshell, pumps move salt water through a heater and spray it into the top of a diffusion tower – a column packed with a polyethylene matrix that creates a large surface area for the water to flow across as it falls. Other pumps at the bottom of the tower blow warm dry air up the column in the opposite direction of the flowing water.

Evaporation occurs as the trickling salt water meets the warm dry air, evaporation occurs. Blowers push the now-saturated air into a condenser, the first stage in a process that forces the moisture to condense as fresh water.

He has successfully tested a small experimental prototype in his lab, producing about 500 gallons of fresh water daily.

KEY FEATURE Klausner said the key feature of his system is that it can tap warmed water plants have used to cool their machines to heat the salt water intended for desalination, turning a waste product into a useful one.

His calculation show that a larger version, tapping the waste coolant water from a typically sized 100 megawatt power plant, has the potential to produce 1.5 million gallons daily. The cost is projected at $2.50 per thousand gallons, compared with $10 per thousand gallons for conventional distillation and $3 per thousand gallons for reverse osmosis.

14 HEAT EXTRACTION

expensive in coastal areas where power plants are located, Klausner said. Presumably a utility would sell the fresh water it produces, recouping and then profiting from its investment, he said.

Because the equipment would have to extract as much heat as possible from the coolant water, it would need to be installed when a plant is built, he said.

Klausner, said a miniature version of the full-scale system could be run using solar or other forms of heat, which might be useful for small towns or villages. UF has applied for a patent on the technology.

Another potential caveat is that a fullscale version of the mechanism would require a football field-sized plot of land, likely to be Source: THE HINDU, Jan 13, 2005, Page.5.

****

PRIME DISCOVERY

Martin Nowak, a German eye specialist has discovered the world‟s largest prime number, breaking the previous record for a prime number by half a million digits.

studied them 350 years back. So far only 42 have been found.

Prime numbers are divisible only be themselves and 1. While the first prime numbers 2, 3, 5, and 7, are easy to identify. Dr.Nowak‟s monster primes number is more than 7.8 million digits long and is written as 2 to the 25,964,951st power minus 1.

The eye surgeon is one of thousands of volunteers using software provided by the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (Gimps), a project to discover the holy grail of prime number research – a million-digit prime number. His new prime number was indeed bigger than the previous biggest prime, discovered by an American.

The number belongs to a special class of rare prime numbers known as Mersenne primes, names after a 17th century French monk who

Nowak‟s number has 7,816,230 digits. It can be written out, just in tiny print on a very large wall poster.

Source: THE HINDU, Mar 03, 2005, Page.22.

SUDUKO Suduko – the Japanese number game. It started as a „magic squares‟ in the 18th century by Leonhard Euler, a mathematician from Basel, Switzerland. It traveled to Japan only in the 80s with a Japanese publisher, who picked up a book on it in New York. In Tokyo, he „Japanised‟ it to become Sudoko. A retired judge from New Zealand, Wayne Gould, had picked up that version from a Tokyo bookstore in 1997. If you think he did it to keep himself occupied in the autumn of his life, you are wrong. Because Gould first knocked at the door of The Times office with it and is now raking in the moolah through his website sudoku.com. And if this rage continues in the West, it might soon be difficult to find a man there unaware of it. But for the time being in India, there are still many so. But sudoku needs no classes. It is for the masses.

Courtesy: The Hindu

Source: MATHEMATICS TODAY, Jul, 2005, Page.70. DAY OF LOVE February 14 – Valentine‟s Day – all in the name of St. Valentine. There are many legends attached to this saint of love. One legend has it that Valentine was a priest who served during the third Century in Rome. Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers. So he outlawed marriage for young men, who were potential soldiers. Valentine felt this was an unfair decree and performed marriages for young lovers in secret. His defiance was discovered and Claudius ordered that he be put to death. Another legend has it that while Valentine was in prison he sent the first greeting himself. It is believed that he fell in love with a young girl (may be the jailor‟s daughter) who used to visit him regularly. He is supposed to have sent the letter before his death and it was signed “From Your Valentine”! Despite its hazy beginnings, Valentine‟s Day has become popular. It is a day to remember your loved ones and tell them you love them. Source: THE HINDU, Feb 11, 2005, Young World - Page.1.

15

BrahMos, the anti-ship supersonic cruise missile jointly developed by India and Russia. NPO Mashinostroyenia Aerospace Company, the Russian partner in the BrahMos joint venture. The Indian partner is the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO). India and Russia are the only countries in the world to possess a supersonic cruise missile. Even the US has only a sub-sonic cruise missile called Tomahawk. Russia has another supersonic cruise missile called Moskit but it is bulky, has a short range and work on solid propulsion. In comparison, the BrahMos is sleek and deadly in its velocity and kill-power. It has 9 times the kill-power of the Tomahawk. The BrahMos cruises in the atmosphere at 2.8 to 3 times the speed of sound (Mach 2.8 to 3). It is thus 3 times faster than Tomahawk. The 8 metres long BrahMos has a range of 290 km and weighs 3 tonnes. Two stage vehicle, carrying a conventional warhead of 200 kg. It cannot carry nuclear warheads. It is a versatile, universal anti-ship missile that can be launched from a variety of platforms, ships,

BRAHMOS submarines, silos on land, vehicles on land and aircraft. Although it is an anti-ship missile, it can take out targets on the land too. The BrahMos is a portmanteau word that stands for the rivers Brahmaputra and Moscow, packing in itself the fury and the destructive power of the Brahmaputra and the gentleness and grace of the Moscow. Its first ground launch was on June 12, 2001. The 8th launch, from a Naval ship on November 3, 2004. It accurately hit the target, which was a decommissioned ship of the Navy, which was moving in the waters. The missile has advanced fire-control systems. Whatever be the movement of the target in the sea, the missile will zero it in on it and take it out. The missile is under production in Hyderabad. The components and subsystem are mostly manufactured in India. With 8 consecutive successful flights of BrahMos from the Integrated Test-Range at Chandipur-on-sea, Orissa, the production of the missile is fully under way at the massive BrahMos Integration Complex, Hyderabad.

Source: THE HINDU, Dec 05, 2004, Page.10. **** HOW THE EXPLOSIVES CAN BE USED HMX: High Melting Explosives As they are scientifically known, are among the most powerful in use by the world‟s militaries today. HMX, also known as octogen, is made from hexamine, ammonium nitrate, nitric acid and acetic acid. Because it explodes violently at high temperatures, it is used in various kinds of explosives and rocket fuels. RDX:

Also referred to as cyclonite or hexogen, RDX is a white crystalline solid usually used in mixtures with other explosives, oils, or waxes. Rarely used alone, it has a high degree of stability in storage and is considered the most powerful of the high explosives used by militaries. PLASTIC EXPLOSIVES: Experts say both HMX and RDX are key ingredients in plastic explosives such as Semtex Source: THE HINDU, Oct 26, 2004, Page.14.

and C-4, puttylike military substances that easily can be shaped. Libyan terrorists used just 0.45 kg of Semtex in 1988 to down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 persons. C-4 or its main ingredients were used in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, killing 17 US sailors. Traces of RDX were found in an investigation of explosions that crippled two heavily fortified Israeli tanks, indicating Palestinian militants have obtained at least small quantities of the extremely potent material. Just 2.25 kg of either plastic explosive would be enough to blow up a dozen jetliners, experts say. NUCLEAR USE: Experts say HMX can be used to create a highly powerful explosion with enough intensity to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction.

16 MORE IS NOT MERRIER Nearly 14 years ago on March 1, 1991, India‟s population crossed the billion mark. It was officially placed at 1,027,015,247. India has 16.7 percent of the world‟s population, but only 2.45 percent of world‟s resources and 4 percent of the world‟s freshwater resources. An Indian is born every two seconds and by the end of a day approximately 42,434 Indians are added to the burgeoning figure. According to official data, global population has increased threefold during the last century from 2 billion to 6 billion, but India‟s has increased five times, from 238 million to more than one billion. Around 3.6 million births a year are unplanned ones. Consider the Human Development Report 2004 (HDR 2004), Norway leads the pack of 177 nations with the highest human development index whereas India ranks 127 in the “medium human development” group of

nations. Norway‟s per capita gross domestic product is nearly 14 times that of an average Indian who earns $2,670 (this number says nothing about the skewed distribution of income that results in nearly 80 per cent of Indians earning less than an equivalent of $2 a day or less than $730 a year). But Norway‟s population of 4.5 millions is 0.4 percent that of India‟s. It has more than seven times the number of medical doctors for every lakh for population compared with India and about 20 percent of its population is less than 15 years of age compared with India‟s 33 percent in that category. Despite being located closer to the Arctic Circle (the freezing zone), all Norwagians have access to clean water, whereas 16 percent in India do not have it. India‟s position may be better than that of the people‟s Democratic Republic of Laos or Papua New Guinea, but the fact remains that nearly 50 times the population of Norway do not have access to clean water in India, according to HDR 2004.

Source: THE HINDU, Feb 13, 2005, Page.18. SCIENTISTS WHO CHANGED THE WORLD Johann Gutenberg invented the movable type, which led to a knowledge explosion in the world. He printed the Bible, which reached all sections of people since its price was cheap. Printing was probably the most important development in the history of western civilization. The Chinese invented paper in the first century A.D. and printing by ninth century. They carved complete pages of text on wooden blocks and took copies from them on paper. Chinese paper had spread to Europe by the eleventh century. The first paper was made in Germany around 1390 A.D. During the early 1450 A.D. with Fust‟s money and his own hard work, Gutenberg perfected his method of casting type and of casting enough to set about printing his chosen work, the Bible. Gutenberg was born, probably in Mainz in Germany, around 1398 A.D. His father worked

in the local Archbishop‟s mint. It was probably there that Johann learned the art of precision metal work of casting coins. His method of preparing types and metal combination remained in use for over five hundred years and this is why Gutenberg is acclaimed as the inventor of movable type. Johann Gutenberg invented printing before the middle of fifteenth century. Typography is the more correct term for what he did was to construct the apparatus for making movable metal letters or type and for using these to produce many copies, all alike, of a book. Gutenberg was first credited as “the inventor if printing” in a book published in Cologne in 1499. It was his system and his equipment that led to the development of printing in Europe. He was given a pension as a distinguished citizen of Mainz in 1465. He died on February 3, 1468 A.D.

Source: THE HINDU, Feb 23, 2005, Page.15. **** Lake dolphins are extremely rare since there are only two places in the world where dolphins live in a lake. Songkhla Lake in Thailand is the lake where these rare mammals are found and another one is Chilka Lake in Orissa. These dolphins (Chilka Lake) are called Irrawady Dolphins. Source: THE HINDU, Feb 21, 2005, Page.7.

17 HARVESTING PIG HEART VALVES The Chennai based International Centre for Cardio Thoracic and Vascular Diseases and the Meat Products of India (MPI) have entered into a partnership to harvest pig heart valves and ureters, which can be processed and transplanted in place of synthetic valves and blood vessels in human beings. Pig heart valves were an ideal biological substitute in human beings (because of the artificial heart valves were more compatible than synthetic ones) because the scaffold of the pig‟s heart valve and the human valve “are the same”. Also, there was a shortage of donor valves for replacing diseased heart valves in patients with rheumatic heart diseases or for replacing blood vessels in those with diabetic foot. In pig hearts, the valves are „de-cellularised‟ so that there are no more pig cells in them and hence no chances of rejection also. The pig‟s ureter or the tube connecting the kidneys to the bladder could be processed and used to replace damaged blood vessels, especially in diabetic patients with foot gangrene. Source: THE HINDU, Nov 26, 2004, Page.7.

**** CVR – COCKPIT VOICE RECORDER: BLACK BOX

The “black box” – the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), coloured, in fact, bright orange, like all such devices, it was easily spotted in the twisted mass of metal. Every large modern civilian airliner must have two black boxes. The CVR records the last 30 minutes of conversation and other sounds in the cockpit. The Flight Data Recorder (FDR) stores information on the controls, speed, altitude and other data. FDRs record between five and several thousand parameters, always retaining the last 25 hours.

and a slur on their professionalism. But a study of crash CVR tapes by Robert Rudich and the then director of the US government‟s Bureau of Aviation Safety, Chuck Miller, showed that for every pilot whose actions were impugned, two were absolved of responsibility. By law, the latest versions of “black boxes” (as the public, but never the professionals, call them) must withstand an impact of 3400 times the force of gravity, resist a fire of 1100 degrees C for 30 minutes and survive immersion to a depth of 6000 metres. To help find them in the sea, they are equipped with “pingers”, smallsonar beacons activated by contact with water, which operate for 30 days.

Black boxes are not the be-all and endall of air accident investigation. Investigators are able to deduce a surprising amount of critical information from wreckage, but the black box gives the air crash detective the benefit of a realtime recording of the event under scrutiny. The black box can also contain the most poignant secrets.

With digital technology, the role of the black box is changing fast. On the most modern jets, a vast amount of information is held in the plane‟s own computer and flashed to it by the airline, air traffic control, navigation satellites or other aircraft. But investigators still need to know more about what is going on, so international organizations are looking at installing video recorders in the cockpit as well.

The idea of having flight data available has been around since the beginning of powered flight. The Wright brothers did it on the first aeroplane to fly in 1903. Mounted on a strut were a clock, a vane measuring air speed, and a device recording engine revolution. Charles Lindbergh had a primitive means of recording data on the first solo transatlantic flight in 1927.

Aslo produced are easily accessible black boxes called QARs (for Quick Access Recorders), which can give the airline vital information on how the aircraft is handling. Says Paul Hart, business development manager of Penny & Giles, a company that makes black boxes: “The FDR says what went wrong. The QAR says what is going wrong”.

As the use of CVRs became widespread, there was a dramatic increase in the number of occasions for which the sequence of events prior to an accident could be recreated. Still, many pilots saw black boxes as a threat to their privacy Source: READER‟S DIGEST, Sep, 1998, Pp.56-62.

****

18 UNDERSTANDING MUTUAL FUNDS The key considerations while investing in a mutual fund are safety, liquidity and return. Safety is assured when investors are able to get back their money. Liquidity enables investors exit the fund any time. There are no assured returns from mutual funds and they vary with the schemes under each fund. The schemes are structured to suit the risk bearing capacity of unit holders and the nature of deployment of funds by the various schemes.

Mutual funds invest in multiple asset classes, enable continuous evaluation and provide higher flexibility in investment plans. After all, diversification is the key to achieving growth with lower risk. Investors in mutual funds have a wide choice from an assorted variety of funds and schemes with several products on offer. Competition in the industry has led to innovative changes in standard products by fund houses. The product choice enables investors choose options that suit their return requirements and risk appetite. They can combine the options to arrive at their own mutual fund portfolios that will fit their financial planning objectives. The funds are invested in a portfolio of marketable securities, reflecting the investment objective. The value of the portfolio and investor‟s holdings alter with changes in the market value of investments.

The structure of mutual funds is governed by the Securities and Exchange Board of India under the SEBI (Mutual Fund) Regulations 1996. These regulations make it mandatory for mutual funds to have a three tier structure – a sponsor, a trustee and an asset management company (AMC). The sponsor is the promoter of the mutual fund and appoints the trustees. The trustees are responsible to the investors in the mutual fund and appoint the AMC for managing the investment portfolio. The AMC is the business face of the mutual fund, as it manages all the affairs of the mutual fund. The mutual fund and the AMC have to be registered with the SEBI.

Mutual funds predominantly invest in equity shares and debt instruments. Under equity funds, one can invest in diversified equity schemes, primary market schemes, index-based funds and sectoral funds.

SEBI regulations also provide for who can be a sponsor, trustee and AMC and specify the format of agreements between these entities. These agreements provide for the rights, duties and obligations of these three entities.

Debt funds invest predominantly in debt markets. Diversified debt funds, income funds, gilt funds, liquid and money market funds, fixed term plans and floating rate funds are among the categories of debt funds. While equity funds suit growth objectives, debt funds fit income objectives.

Mutual funds are the preferred route for investors, particularly small and retail investors, who do not have the knowledge or time to directly trade in the equity and debt markets. The funds are managed by qualified investment professionals and other service providers who are paid for their services. Portfolio diversification, professional management and reduced risk are among the myriad advantages of mutual funds.

Mutual fund houses also offer balanced funds and money market funds. Balanced funds invest in equity and debt in specified proportions while money market funds are preferred by institutional investors which churn their investments depending on the need and view.

Source: THE HINDU, Feb 14, 2005, Page.16.

**** UNESCO HEADQUARTERS IN PARIS

The French Government and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization signed an agreement in Paris on July 2, 2004 on a 6 mn dollar permanent UNESCO headquarters to be built in Paris. The new headquarters will be built on a site rented from the French Government for a nominal sum of 1,000 francs a year. It will have extra territorial rights and its high officials will enjoy diplomatic immunity. The headquarters will be financed by an interest-free thirty-year loan of 7 mn dollars from the French Government – 6 mn dollars for equipment. Source: THE HINDU, Jul 05, 2004, Page.9. ****

19 MORE ABOUT UNESCO The UNESCO World Heritage Committee meets in June-July every year to include certain areas to the World Heritage List on the basis of cultural or natural heritage of such sites. Sometimes, a combination of the two aspects is also taken into account. So far, 788 places in the world have been declared heritage sites, of which 611 are of cultural importance, 154 natural and 23 a mixture of both. Altogether, 26 sites in India have now made it to the World Heritage List. Source: THE HINDU, Jul 05, 2004, Page.5. **** „BIOLOGICAL QUALITY OF TAMIRABARANI WATER WORSENING‟ The presence of coliform in the Tamirabarani is on the rise in the last four years. The quality of the Tamirabarani water has worsened due to the presence of colifrom bacteriae, which trigger the outbreak of cholera, gastroenteritis and typhoid. The Bureau of Indian Standards stipulates that 95 percent of water in the distribution system should not contain any coliform organism in 100 ml and no organism should be detectable in 100 ml of any two consecutive water samples. The World Health Organisation norms too demand that no colifrom should be present in the water for distribution system. But the quality of Tamirabarani water is steadily worsening. The variation of coliform density in Tamirabarani ranged from a minimum of 32 MPN (Most Probable Number)/100 ml to a maximum of 171 MPN/100 ml in 2001. The variation of faecal coliform found in the samples in 2001 raned from 4.87 MPN/100 ml to 15.65 MPN/100 ml. However, the total coliform count is now ranging from a minimum of 7 MPN/100 ml to a maximum of 900/100 ml and the count is higher where open defecation is high. As the river flows towards the sea, the coliform density increases significantly. The river having a coliform count ranging between 2 and 500 MPN/100 ml at Kokkirakulam, has a count of 7 and 1600 MPN/100 ml at Srivaikundam, the last dam before the estuary at Punnaikaayal. The presence of faecal coliform clearly indicates that the alarming level of bacterial contamination, chiefly due to the mixing up of human excreta, may cause the outbreak of water-borne diseases at anytime. Source: THE HINDU, Dec 01, 2004, Page.5.

**** PRISTINE PEAK

MEENA MENON When Kangchenjunga was first climbed on May 25, 1955, its icy peak was left untouched. The government of Sikkim had objected to any attempt to climb the mountain, whose eastern side is in that state. Charles Evans, who led the successful British expedition, specially went to Ganktok, the capital of Sikkim, to meet the ruler, Sir Tashi Namgyal, to promise him that the team would leave the top and its immediate neighbourhood untouched. And so, George Band and Joe Brown, both British climbers, stopped short of the summit on that historic day. Kangchenjunga was believed to the highest mountain in the world till 1852. Now the world‟s third highest mountain, after Everest and K2, it is located on the Sikkim-Nepal border and have five peaks, of which the highest is 28,169 feet or 8586 metres. The name Kangchenjunga means “The Five Treasures of the Great Snow”. The people of Sikkim regard it as a God and a protector. In 1899, an Italian, Vittorio Sella, and an Englishman, Douglas Freshfield, explored the beautiful mountain, which is technically demanding to climb. Kangchenjunga does not have an “easy” route, as the threat of avalanche is high. Since it is in the eastern Himalayas it receives the brunt of the monsoon moisture. The Kangenchenjunga Conservation Area hopes to preserve the remarkable bio diverse ecosystem. It covers an area of 2035 sq.km, and includes river valleys of dense sub-tropical and temperate forests up to alpine tundra, and the crowining heights of the Himalayan ice peaks. The World Wildlife Fund for Nature has identified the Eastern Himalya as one of the “Global 200” most important eco-systems on earth. Source: THE HINDU, Young World Feb 18, 2005, Page.1. ****

20 NETAJI‟S FAMILY SURPRISED BY TAIWAN‟S DENIAL OF AIR CRASH A niece (by marriage) of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and chairperson of the Netaji Research Bureau, Krishna Bose, is both “intrigued and surprised” at the Taiwanese authorities‟ ruling out any air crash at Taihoku on August 18, 1945, in which Netaji is widely believed to have died. The authorities have reportedly assured the one-man Netaji commission of Inquiry of Justice M.K. Mukherjee that proof substantiating the claim will be provided. The disclosure is expected to raise fresh questions about Netaji‟s death, events leading to which are presently being inquired into by the Commission. Prof. Rajat Kanta Ray, historian, who has studied Netaji‟s life, is skeptical. He said there was “overwhelming evidence in favour of Netaji dying in a plane crash in Taihoku. Records of the Taiwanese Government of that period in the Second World War when the Japanese-occupation was collapsing are not expected to be complete and exhaustive”, he said. “The easiest way of resolving the matter is to have a DNA test done on his remains” (kept in an urn in Renzogi in Tokyo), said Prof. Ray. Many Stories “For 60 years and despite some initial reluctance on the part of the incredulous we have held on to this theory concerning his death… 99% sure that the crash had occurred”, said Mrs. Bose. Mrs. Bose, along with her late husband and nephew of Netaji, Sisir Kumar Bose (driver of the car in which Netaji escaped from Kolkata and subsequently the country on January 16 – 17, 1941), has enquired into Netaji,s death over the past few decades. “Many stories have been floating around regarding the death, some saying that he had

gone into sanyas… But at least seven survivors of the crash have deposed to two previous Commissions inquiring into Netaji‟s death stating that he was killed in the crash at Taihoku”, Mrs. Bose said. PTI reports: The Taiwan Government has informed the Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry that the air crash had never taken place on August 18, 1945. Mr. Justice Mukherjee told newspersons here that the Taiwanese authorities confirmed to him, during his recent visit to that country, that there was no record of any air crash at Taihoku – the old name of Taipei – between August 14 and September 20, 1945. Mr. Justice Mukherjee, who was speaking to the media after a routine hearing of the Commission, said the authorities had promised to provide documentary proof within 15 days. They confirmed the genuiness of two emails sent by the Taipei Mayor and Minister of Transportation and Communication to Anuj Dhar, a journalist, stating that there was no air crash during that period. “The Mayor of Taipei and the External Affairs Ministry of the Taiwan Government confirmed to us the e-mails were genuine”, he said. The message by the Minister of Transportation and Communication, Lin LingSan, stated: “…during the period August 14 to October 25, 1945, no evidence shows that one plane had ever crashed at the old Matsuyama Airport (now Taipei Domestic Airport) carrying Mr. Subhash Chandra Bose,” He said that the Commission would wrap up its findings and finalise its report by May 15, 2005, after cross-examining more witnesses this month.

Source: THE HINDU, Feb 05, 2005, Page.9. **** DHANUSKODI The people of India, particularly those in Tamil Nadu, cannot forget December 23, 1964. It was on this day, the entire holy town of age old Dhanuskodi was ravaged by the heavy cyclonic storm with heavy to very heavy rain and tides to a height of a big coconut tree. The entire town and around 16 square km area was eroded by the rough sea. But, even after the completion of 40 years of the one of the worst cyclones of the South India, Dhanuskodi, famous pilgrimage centre from the period of Lord Rama, is being sidelined, thanks to unknown reasons. The remnants of the railway station, temple, church and small settlements are found as mute witnesses to the devastating cyclone. Source: THE HINDU, Dec 23, 2004, Page.5. ****

21 NEED TO ACT ON CLIMATE CHANGE Sir David King# In 2004, scientists published a study in the journal Nature that indicated that many plant and animal species are unlikely to survive climate change. Their analyses suggest that 15-37 percent of a sample of 1,103 land plants and animals would eventually become extinct as a result of climate changes expected by 2050. And earlier this month (Nov 2004), 300 scientists contributing to the Arctic climate impacts assessment warned that Arctic temperatures have risen by almost twice the global average over the past 50 years. This increase looks set to continue, with a further rise of between 4C and 7C possible by 2100. The rise in Arctic temperatures is already impacting heavily on people and wildlife. Buildings from Russia to Canada have collapsed because of subsidence linked to thawing permafrost, and mammals such as polar bears and seals have been affected. We know that the global temperature has now risen by between 0.6C and 0.7C over the past century. Globally, the 1990s were the hottest decade, and 1998 was the hottest year since our records began in 1861. Moreover the seven hottest years since 1861 all fell in the 1990s. Around the world, glaciers are thinning and in retreat and sea levels are rising. During the 20 th century, the sea level rose by 10cm to 20cm, and global snow cover has diminished by 10 percent since the 1960s. Carbon dioxide levels are at their highest ever and set to increase. Natural effects alone, such as El Nino, could not have caused that increase. It is a result of man’s action in burning up reserves of carbon at a rate that has never been exceeded before. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has risen by almost 30 percent since the Industrial Revolution. Both the current concentration of about 379 parts per million (ppm) – compared with 280 ppm in the pre-industrial era – and the current rate of increase of approximately 2 ppm annually, are the highest since the last ice age. The planet has not experienced comparable concentrations for at least 740,000 years – and probably for many millions of years. The Greenland ice sheet was retreating at a rate of around one metre a year in 2001, according to a NASA study. The latest study indicates it is moving back at about 10 metres a year. If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt, the sea level would rise by between six and seven metres. That would create a major problem for coastal cities. More intense rainfall events are expected to be a feature of climate change. In 2002, severe floods in Europe caused 37 deaths and had an estimated direct cost of $16bn. According to the Association of British Insurers, 2000 was the wettest UK autumn for almost 300 years, with heavy rainfall leading to damage to 10,000 properties and nearly £1bn in insurance claims. During the heat wave of 2003, 14,000 people died in France, while the death toll across Europe reached 30,000. This was the worst natural disaster in Europe in 50 years. Statistical analyses show, with 90 percent certainty, that roughly half of the severity of this hot summer can be attributed to global warming. (# - Scientific advisor to the U.K. Government) Source: THE HINDU, Nov 25, 2004, Page.10. **** FOOD FOR THOUGHT You are what you eat, and that includes your brain. So what is the ultimate mastermind diet? Your brain is the greediest organ in your body, with some quite specific dietary requirements. So it is hardly surprising that what you eat can affect now you think. If you believe the dietary supplement industry, you could become the next Einstein just by popping the right combination of pills. Look closer, however, and it isn‟t that simple. But if it is possible to eat your way to genius, it must surely be worth a try. First, go to the top of the class by eating breakfast. The brain is best fuelled by a steady supply of glucose, and many studies have shown that skipping breakfast reduces people‟s performances at school. But it isn‟t simply a matter of getting some calories down. “Junk food is implicated in a slew of serious mental disorders”. A smart choice for lunch is omelette and salad. Eggs are rich in choline, which your body uses to produce the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Researchers found that when healthy young adults were given the drug

22 scopolamine, which blocks acetylcholine receptors in the brain, it significantly reduced their ability to remember word pairs. Low levels of acetylcholine are also associated with Alzheimer‟s disease, and some studies suggest that boosting dietary intake may slow age-related memory loss. A salad packed full of antioxidants, including beta-carotene and vitamins C and E, should also help keep an ageing brain in tiptop condition by helping to mop up damaging free radicals. Round off lunch with a yogurt dessert, and you should be alert and ready to face the stresses of the afternoon. That‟s because yogurt contains the amino acid tyrosine, needed for the production of the neurotransmitters dopamine and noradrenalin, among others. Don‟t forget to snaffle a snack mid-afternoon, to maintain your glucose levels. Just make sure you avoid junk food, and especially highly processed goodies such as cakes, pastries and biscuits, which contain trans-fatty acids. Brains are around 60 percent fat, so if trans-fats clog up the system, what should you eat to keep it well oiled? In other words, your granny was right: fish is the best brain food. Not only will it feed and lubricate a developing brain, DHA also seems to help stave off dementia. Finally, you could do worse than finish off your evening meal with strawberries and blueberries. Rats fed on these fruits have shown improved coordination, concentration and short-term memory. And even if they don‟t work such wonders in people, they still taste fantastic. So what have you got to lose? Source: MATHEMATICS TODAY, Jul 2005, Page.6. STEM CELLS, CLONING, AND ETHICS By Lewis Wolpert Stem cells are cells that have the capacity for renewal as well as the capacity to give rise to specialized cells, such as nerve and muscle and blood cells. We have in our bodies a number of stem cells, which are present in very small numbers in certain tissues. There are stem cells at the base of our skin which divide and one of the two daughter cells can differentiate to replace the skin cells that we lose daily, while the other remains a stem cell. Again, there is a continual loss of cells in our gut, and these are replaced by dividing stem cells one of whose daughters differentiate into functioning gut cells. In our bone marrow there are stem cells that give rise to blood cells. These stem cells multiply and replace lost cells throughout our lives. But in the body their potential to give rise to cells other than those for the renewal of the local tissue is totally restricted. By contrast, stem cells derived from the early embryo have a much greater potential. We all have our origin in the fertilized egg, a single cell. The egg divides to give rise, eventually, to many billions of cells. At an early stage there are only a few hundred cells. Some of these cells are pluripotent, which means that they can give rise at later stages to any of the specialized cells of our bodies such as skin, nerve, blood and muscle cells. It is possible to separate the cells at this stage and place them in a culture dish where they are very happy, and grow and multiply. Under certain conditions these cells can be made to differentiate, that is change, into cells of a variety of different types such as muscle, nerve and skin. Since they can both multiply and give rise to different kinds of cells they are referred to as stem cells, and since they come from the early embryo they are called embryonic stem cells. The current excitement about embryonic stem cells is their ability to give rise to different cell types – this might provide a powerful means to repair damage to tissue in the body such as the heart, brain, spinal cord or pancreas. It should be possible, it is hoped, to so engineer stem cells that they could replace damaged cells in the pancreas that normally secrete insulin, and whose damage results in diabetes. Again could stem cells replace damaged cells in the cells replace damaged cells in the spinal cord that have led to paralysis? Both pancreatic and nerve cells have been made from stem cells in culture, but making them functional in the right place in the body is a very difficult problem. One of the major problems in using embryonic stem cells to cure a patient comes from the body mounting an immune response to the foreign cells – they were taken from someone else‟s embryo – and so rejecting and destroying the implanted cells. One solution to this problem is to use therapeutic cloning so the DNA in the transplanted cells comes from the patient. Cloning hit the headlines with the sheep Dolly being created from an unfertilized egg whose nucleus was removed and the nucleus of a cell from a mammary gland culture then injected. It is the nucleus in the cell that contains the DNA and genes that code for the proteins that determine the bahaviour of cells. In normal development, the sperm brings in the genes from the father to join with those of the mother, but a nucleus from some adult cells of the patient might support development of the embryo. Then embryonic stem cells would be taken from that early embryo and used to treat the patient. And since these cells have the same genes as the patient, there would be no immune rejection. This therapeutic cloning only lets the early embryo develop, and is never intended to give rise to a person.

23 Another approach is not to use embryonic stem cells, with their immunological problems, but to try to use adult stem cells, which may have greater potential than previously thought. A much-investigated stem cell is that found in the bone marrow; it replaces blood cells continuously. These stem cells from mice can be grown in culture. There have been reports that when injected into adult mice, they could give rise to several cell types such as muscle and nerve cells. But later reports questioned this and showed that the stem cells merely fused with normal cells from those tissues, giving the illusion that they had actually given rise to either muscle or brain cells. Similarly, reports that stem cells from the nervous system could give rise to blood cells have been questioned. In spite of the technical difficulties, there is still great hope that the problems can be overcome, as more is understood about the nature and behaviours of stem cells. One possible danger is that stem cells not under proper control could give rise to cancer cells, and this has to be studied with great care. But are there ethical issues? In the United States, it is forbidden to use Government funds to make human embryonic stem cells. The reason given for this is that in order to isolate the stem cells from the early human embryo, the embryo has to be broken up and effectively destroyed. Since it is believed by several religious groups and the American Government that the fertilized egg is already a human being, this destruction of the early embryo is effectively killing a person. But what is the justification for believing that the fertilized egg or the early embryo is already a human being? This is a religious belief for which there has never been any justification based on biblical or other religious writings, and which does not have any scientific justification. For example, one does not know if the early embryo will develop into one or two persons, as twinning is possible at a larger stage. There is also a fundamental inconsistency in the reasoning of those who would ban stem cells being made from early embryos while at the same time supporting assisted reproduction by in vitro fertilization (IVF). IVF, which is widely used in the U.S., involves the destruction of many early embryos. There is no moral justification for banning stem cells. On the contrary, it offers great hope to all those suffering from a wide variety of illnesses. It is necessary to understand stem cells better-the difficulty is that they are both very complicated and very clever. We must be patient. But there is another ethical issue related to these new techniques for altering the behaviour of cells and embryos. Does reproductive cloning really open up slippery slope that could lead us to real dangers? With reproductive cloning a woman would donate her egg to the person who would want to be cloned, either a man or a woman. Cells would be taken from one of them put into the egg, which would then have to be put back into some woman so that it could develop in her womb. If the child developed normally – it is a very big if – it would effectively be an identical twin of the donor of the nucleus, but clearly many years younger. I fail to see what possible ethical issues this raises, as the child will be exposed to a quite different environment as it grows up compared to its older twin. That the child would grow up to have the identical personality to the older twin is just nonsense. Claims that there would be excessive pressure on the child to be like the twin raises no new issue, as there are many different pressures on children. Much more serious is that all the evidence shows that if the cloned embryo did give rise to a baby, the child would almost certainly suffer from severe and disabling abnormalities. There is not a single reliable report of any animal close to humans, like apes, having been cloned. It just does not work, and the embryos fail to develop. Claims from certain groups that they have actually cloned a human should be dismissed out of hand. Why the possibility of human reproductive cloning should have raised so much discussion is really puzzling. Perhaps it is the fear of interfering too much with natural birth. Perhaps, too, it is linked to the image of Mary Shelley‟s Frankenstein, of creating a monster. But there are humans whose behaviour is monstrous and has nothing to do with cloning. If cloning could be demonstrated to be safe, in that the child would be normal, then there are no new ethical issues I can identify. (The writer is Professor of Biology as Applied to Medicine, Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, University College, London.) Source: THE HINDU, Dec 09, 2004, Page.10. ****

24 INDIA RANKS 101 ON ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY INDEX India is ranked a disappointing 101st out of 146 countries analysed in the recently released Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI). Produced by a team of environmental experts from Yale and Columbia Universities, the 2005 report is the most comprehensive, country-by-country environmental ranking system to date. Using 21 indicators and 76 measurements, including natural resource endowments, past and present pollution levels, and policy efforts, the report creates a „sustainability score‟ for each country, with higher scores indicating better environmental sustainability. The 10 most sustainable countries, as ranked by ESI, are dominated by wealthy, sparselypopulated nations with an abundance of natural resources. Finland has been ranked 1st, with Norway, Sweden and Iceland all figuring in the top five. 10 are Uruguay and Guyana, both of which have relatively low population densities and an abundance of natural resources. Conversely, the only densely-populated countries that have received even above average rankings are Japan, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy, some of the richest countries on the list. Environmental Sustainability Index of High Population Density Countries ESI Rank 30 31 41 69 79 85 101 102 106 109 112 114 118 122 126 129 130 139 141 145 146

Country

ESI Score

Japan Germany Netherlands Italy Sri Lanka Nepal India Poland Rwanda Jamaica Belgium Bangladesh El Salvador South Korea Philippines Lebanon Burundi Trinidad & Tobago Haiti Taiwan North Korea

57.3 56.9 53.7 50.1 48.5 47.7 45.2 45.0 44.8 44.7 44.4 44.1 43.8 43.0 42.3 40.5 40.0 36.3 34.8 32.7 29.2

Source: 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index Report, Yale & Columbia University. # This table shows the overall ESI ranks only of countries and territories in which more than half the land area has a population density above 100 persons/kmsq. Source: THE HINDU, Feb 04, 2005, Page.12.

**** VALCONIC FURY

Sunday Morning, May 18, 1980, Time: 8.32 a.m.: Mt. St. Helens erupts; Ash and pumice are hurled out of the volcano. Huge chunks of volcano debris called hummocks fall into the valley below. Clouds of ash and dust rise 20 miles upwards, darkening the sky and spreading downwind towards Eastern Washington State, enveloping the entire area in dust. The entire northern flank of the mountain collapses and falls as an avalanche lowering the height of the mountain by 1,500 feet. This forms the largest landslide in recorded history. Gas rich magma and heated groundwater from inside the volcano are suddenly released in a powerful lateral blast. The enormous amount of debris buries the surrounding forests. An area of 230 square miles was flattened in less than three minutes. Fifty-seven people lost their lives. Countless species of wildlife were scalded to death. The eruption lasted nine hours. At the end of it, the landscape had changed from lush green forest to an ashen grey wasteland. Mt. St. Helens situated at a height of 8,364 ft in the state of Washington, US about three hours and 100 miles south of Seattle. Source: THE HINDU, Jan 09, 2005, Magazine Page.7. ****

25

1. Adis Ababa – is the capital city of Ethiopia 2. Geneva – a cultural and financial centre of Switzerland 3. During th Indus valley civilization period of the dominant number used for weights and measures was 16 4. Which Greek ruler was defeated by Chnadraguptha Maurya – Selecus 5. The capital of Harshavardana‟s kingdom was Kanawj 6. Which Muslim rulers remained in the captivity of his son? – Shah Jahan 7. Who introduced the “Subsidiary Alliance” system? – Wellellesly 8. On which of the following rivers has Hirakud dam been constructed? – Mahanadi 9. Extremist party with in the congress was pioneered by Bal Gangadhar Tilak - Time if Freedom (1915 – 1940) 10. What instrument is used to measure an electric current? – Ammeter 11. Which Italian scientist invented an electric battery in which there are copper and zinc plates? – Volta 12. What instrument is used for measuring air pressure? – Barometer 13. Scientific name of coconut palm is cocos nucifera 14. Which tree is the official of Canada? – Maple Tree 15. Who was the Romanian born gymnast got 10/10 in Olympics? – Nadia Comaneci (1976) 16. Who was the author of Sherlock Holmes? – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 17. Who is a Cowboy? – Horseman skilled at handling cattle in the US west from 1820 Cowboys were employed in small numbers on Texas 18. Which British Governor General started the modern telecommunication? - Dallhousie 19. Darwin got many clues regarding his theory of revaluation from which island? – Galapagos island 20. Demography – statistical study method of human population

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BATTLE OF THE BLUE LASERS Remember the early 1980s – and the battle between the two video recording formats, VHS and Betamax? For something like four years, both formats slugged it out in the market place. Customers who bought one type of player, discovered they couldn‟t play the other. Sixteen years later The wise ones waited – till 1988 – when VHS won out on sheer numbers, and Sony conceded that its Betamax format was a flop. But before that slug fest ended, millions of consumers had wasted their money backing the wrong horse. Sixteen years later, it is sadly a replay of that sorry episode. The battle lines were drawn last week in what could well be a new edition of the „DVD Wars‟, as the optical recording industry seems poised to launch into another needless „winner takes all‟ contest between two different standards for the next generation of high density-high resolution DVDs. Currently available recordable and rewritable (that means multiple write/erase operations) Digital Video (or Versatile) Disks have already witnessed a small conflict that has ended in uneasy stalemate. This has seen the presence in the market, of two types of read-write DVDs, which come from the „plus‟ camp and the „dash‟ camp. The plus camp makes recordable DVDs which are called „DVD+R‟ and rerecordable disks called „DVD+RW‟… The „dash‟ camp calls its offerings DVD-R and DVD-RW. Incompatibility „Plus‟ recorders will not work with „dash‟ media and vice versa. Fortunately the customer was not overly hassled by this lack of standardization because makers of player and recorders quickly adjusted their technology to accept both types of recording and playing media. Last week LG advertised its „super multi DVD Re-writer‟ in India, claiming that it was the „world‟s only all-format DVD re-writer‟, which can read and write all six prevalent formats. When it comes to tomorrow‟s DVDs the conflict has become sharper. While all current optical disk technologies (CDs as well as DVDs) use a red laser (of wavelength, 650 nanometres) to read and write data, the new format uses a blue laser (with a shorter wavelength: 405 nm). The shorter wavelength makes it possible to focus the laser on a smaller spot, and hence pack in the data much tighter. While today‟s DVDs can hold about 4.7 gigabytes of data, the next generation of DVDs based on the blue laser can be expected to hold at least five times as much: 20 GB – 25 GB. One group of manufacturers, already gearing to offer these higher density DVDs starting in 2005, has jointly evolved a joint standard for what will be known as the Blu-Ray dist and has formed the Blu-Ray Disk Association. Even while using an identical Blue laser at 405 nm, to achieve its higher densities, and the same size of disk, 120 mm – as the current CDs and DVDs as well as the Blu-Ray DVD – another group of companies is offering a rival standard called HD-DVD. The main promoters of this specification are all Japanese companies. The body supporting the HDDVD format is known as the DVD Forum. The single layer HD-DVD can hold 15 GB of data, while the single layer Blu-Ray DVD is promised with 27 GB. Coating Thickness Thus they are just as thick as today‟s 4.7 GB DVDs where a 0.6 mm data layer has another 0.6 mm thick coating on top of it. The HD-DVD has used the same data and coating thickness as the present generation DVD – that means 0.6 mm plus 0.6 mm. The Blu-Ray disk‟s data layers are closer to the surface because of the thin coating; so the laser can read smaller etchings enabling it to accommodate slightly more data.

27 However the point the HD-DVD camp is touting, is the precisely because their product is identical in thickness of data layer and coating, to today‟s DVDs, it will be cheaper to manufacture: Existing plants will not need much re-tooling. The message to consumers was clear; “We‟re ready with a drive that will work with the high density DVDs that you‟ll be using tomorrow to store and view all your movies – but it can still work with your old CDs and DVDs”. The unsaid logic Indeed, the unsaid logic behind going for high density DVDs is the expected boom in film-based mass consumer application. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DVD disks will in all probability, require different types of players and recorders – at least to start with. Optical media manufacturers are hedging their bets and gearing to deliver either or both of these next-gen DVDs. I asked Ratul Puri, the Executive Director of Moser Baer India Ltd, India‟s only optical media maker for his take on the current standards „war‟ and this is his reaction: “As the third-largest manufacturer of optical storage media in the world, we are actively involved in R&D work on both formats and standards and are coordinating with most of the leading companies and associations in the world on the same. “Unfortunately, from the consumers‟ perspective, there is going to be a bit of confusion over the two formats and the lack of clarity on any one. “That‟s because larger companies and production houses are divided in their backing for any one standard. Also, unlike the case of DVD-R and DVD-R, where the same drive can read both formats, it is not yet clear whether the same drive can read both formats, it is not yet clear whether HD and Blu-Ray will be able to be read on the same drive. Therefore, it does appear likely that we are headed for another format war”. Source: THE HINDU, Dec 23, 2004, Page.14.

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THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WORD Language, like sex and food, is an intensely personal thing; since everyone uses it, everyone has an opinion about it. Therefore, when the Goethe Institute and the German Language Council announced as international contest to find the most appearing word in the German language, the question that came to mind was how many would agree with the verdict. Clichés and stereotypes There are clichés about languages, and stereotypes about the speakers of those languages. Sexy, mellifluous French, the language of love; Italian – vowel-rich, liquid, perfect for singing; English – quirky, wide-ranging, adaptable. Then there are one‟s own, very personal connections with a language. Many readers would agree that the language of one‟s childhood, the language that one‟s mother spoke, was the most beautiful. The German language was handed an unfair fate. Germans were seen as the villains of the two world wars, and their language has often been used for the purpose of parodying them. But it is also the language of Goethe and Schiller, and an apt vehicle for articulating scientific and scholarly thought. Charlie Chaplin had made fun of Adolph Hitler in his movie “The Great Dictator”, by speaking in a peculiar staccato, faux-Germany style. That harsh manner of speaking German became a favourite of comedians. Movies about World War II that Holywood made in the past 60 years not only popularized the caricature all over the world, but – unjustly – gave non-German speakers the idea that the language could be spoken only that way. It is plausible to imagine that the contest was also an effort to improve the image of the German language. “Habseligkeiten” was selected as the most appealing word in the end, based on the argument: “The word „Habseligkeiten‟ suggests, not a person‟s property or financial assets, but his or her personal belongings, and it has a friendly, sympathetic undertone that makes the proprietor of those things seem rather likeable. A typical owner of „Habseligkeiten‟ is the six year old child who spreads out the contents of his trouser pockets for the sheer pleasure of basking in the wealth and variety of his collection”.

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“Geborgenheit” that won the second place was submitted by a contestant from Slovakia with this explanation: “I love this word. I can think of no other word that expresses so well the sense of being sheltered, safe and comfortable in a place. In my own country there are simply no words to express those feelings. That‟s why it is my favourite German word”. The undisputed favourite among the submissions received from all over the world, the Council‟s report said, was the word “lieben”, which the jury (comprised of artists, journalists and academics) put in third place: “The German word for love is the best, because it differes from the word for life – „Lebeb‟ – by only the one letter “i”. “Aungenblick” came fourth because: “In a subversive way, it is a shade too long ofr what it actually is. It‟s also so much more sensual than the ordinary word „moment‟”. Every German-speaker I spoke with about the most beautiful word begged to disagree. Some did not like the idea that the jury considered the feelings expressed or associated with the terms quoted, rather that the form of the words themselves. The argument for “lieben” and “Leben”, it was pointed out, could easily be applied to “love” and “live” in English. Others thought that the jury should have taken into account the sound of the word and may be even its spelling. The problem, of course, is that the structure and phonetic practice of German is hostile to the sonority of its abstract expressions, with endings in -keit and – schaft to be added syncretically and cumulatively to simple basic ideas, so that the reader can find himself or herself faced with jawbreakers like “windschutzcheibewaschanlage”. A personal thing How intensely personal a choice can be was made clear in a comment by a Canadian I came across in the case of the soc-called jaw-breaker: “When I was a teenager, I was having a conversation with my father in German about automobiles. I stumbled over the word for „windshield wiper‟. …[My father] continured, suing the word „windschutzcheibewaschanlage‟. It translates as “the mechanical assembly that washes the slab or pane that shields from the wind”. Now, this is a mouthful for anyone, and was for some reason always a tongue twister for my mother. It never failed to elicit a smile and a laugh from her, even up to the days before her untimely death. In fact, it may not even be the proper German word for the term and by no stretch could it be considered „beautiful‟… but for the memories of my mother‟s smile and ready laugh, this ridiculous compound noun will forever be the most beautiful German word I know.” Source: THE HINDU, Dec 05, 2004, Literature Review, Magazine - Page.6. **** INTERNATIONAL INTERNET CALLS EVEN CHEAPER If you have a PC with speakers and a mike, with an Internet connection, you can go to the World Phone site (www.worldphone.co.in) and download a free „soft‟ dialpad. Entering the pin code and password available on the prepaid scratch-card allows you to call any telephone number to call any telephone number worldwide from your PC. The called party does not need to come online through a PC. You can dial a mobile or a landline number. Special handset The other route for those who plan to do this regularly, is to buy a special VOIP hand set, attach it to your phone jack, reach your internet account and use it like a normal phone after entering the same PIN code and password. Such phones are available in India from makers such as Cisco and D-Link; World Phone is also selling them at subsidized prices below Rs.5,000 to kickstart its serves. And the quality of phone talk? “This is as good as it gets”, promised World Phone Chairman Aditya Ahluwalia. The company – the first Indian provider to be licensed for VOIP after the technology was legalized by the Government in 2002 – has tied up with Go2Call a leading international player to provide the service in India. [The customer can buy the World Phone prepaid card in denominations of Rs.100, Rs.250, Rs.500 or Rs.1000 available at many supermarkets and general stores. Alternatively, the cards (except the Rs.100)

29 can be ordered online for free home delivery from the online shop at www.rediff.com searching under “telephone and accessories”] Source: THE HINDU, Oct 04, 2004, Page. 13. **** WANNA BE CHANGE? If If If If If If

you you you you you you

want want want want want want

to to to to to to

change change change change change change

Kilometre from Mile => just multiple by 5 then divided by 8 Mile from Kilometre => just multiple by 8 then divided by 5 Litre from Calone => just multiple by 2 then divided by 9 Calone from Litre => just multiple by 9 then divided by 2 Kilo from Bound => just multiple by 20 then divided by 9 Bound from Kilo => just multiple by 9 then divided by 20

1 Feet – > 30.5 cm; 1 kilo -> 2.205 bounds; 1 acre – 4047 sq.m; 1 hectare -> 2.471 acre