Geek gazette spring-09

Electricity Timeline

GeekSpeak Page 1

Page 5

Internet at the speed Page 2 of Intranet

R.P.Feynman

The MicroMouse

Going Green, Naturally!

Page 3

One Pound DNA Page 4

Edison’s Electric Chair Page 5

Sponsored Research Page 14

Google Cheat Sheet Page 6

Page 7

Page 16

Playing Games Using Page 17 Webcam

Space Science. Courtesy Page 10 Hollywood

Geek Gazette Page 18 Crossword

The Mobile Telephony Page 11 Evolution

Science and Man Page 18

Message from the Faculty Advisor It is the 125th anniversary of the IEEE and a just cause for celebration as our very own IIT Roorkee student branch completes 25 years. In order to register the celebration in our memory, the student branch has decided to bring the first issue of the campus technical magazine to you. In all earnestness, I praise the efforts of the team in putting together this chronicle of the research work going on at IITR and several other interesting articles that put cutting-edge technology in a clear perspective.

The IEEE brand name is an umbrella that unites professionals and researchers all over the world. Published under the aegis of the IEEE local branch on the lines of the Spectrum, the official IEEE monthly magazine that touches upon the practical as well as the humanistic aspects of research and technology, GeekGazette will feature more or less the same kind of writing, albeit emanating from within the murals of our hallowed institute with a focus on the contributions that are being or have been made by our professors and hard-working students to the pool of scientific research and technology upgrades.

Like all great endeavors, this magazine has had its fair share of hiccups, most of which have been smoothed out but some of which can be ended only with the support of the readers. To ensure this, I urge you to go through this inaugural issue of the magazine, learn from it, marvel at what technology can achieve and lastly, provide feedback.

As mentor and guide, I congratulate all the members of the team of GeekGazette who worked passionately to produce this wonderful issue and wish them all the very best in passing down a valuable legacy.

Prof. S.N. Sinha

The GeekGazette Team Faculty Advisor Prof S.N. Sinha

President Aditya Narang

Vice President Sachin Joshi

Editor-in-Chief Vidit Saxena

Chief Designer Sarthak Grover

News Editor Bhumika Malik

Editors

Designers

News Bureau

Prashant Chaturvedi Yogeshwar Singh

Shashikant Cashmira Chandranshu Garg

Divyanshu Mohit Kalra

Finance Coordinator Arpit Gupta

Anik Singh Kumar Ishan Nitin Agarwal Pratul Yadav Rose Ketty T. Shivanand

Arnav Thakur Chinmay A Jain Gaurav Jain K. A. Naren Mayank Garg Vikesh Khanna

Special Thanks Shivam Awasthi

Cocoordinators Ghanshyam Gunjan Sharma Jay Aggarwal Mayank Aggarwal Murarka Vivek Anand

Please mail your queries and feedback to geekgazette.iitr@gmail.com

T

hese are distinctly bad times. The world economy is in shambles, terrorists have invaded the most secure portals of the country, and communal demagogues seem hell bent on tearing our society apart. And yet in this threatening milieu, hope springs eternal. We have successfully launched the most economical moon mission in history; the Indian economy is faring much better than its counterparts, and a resurgent Indian society has started to feature at the top in Olympics, cricket, and even the Oscars. It is this resilience and optimist that has sustained our country since Independence, and helped us overcome the numerous hurdles in the path to progress. Much remains to be done, but we are definitely moving forward. As a wise man once said, “Fear not to move forward slowly. Fear only standing still.”

The IIT graduates now stand at a crucial juncture in history where their technical expertise and analytical skills will go a long way in shaping the country's future. The IT revolution ushered in by a certain Mr. Narayan Murthy of Infosys has indelibly placed India on the world map with an immense market and manpower potential, and has sparked off a slew of promising technological ventures in the country. One such innovative venture, TechBuddy Consulting Pvt Ltd, has been launched by six ambitious final year students of IIT Roorkee. On a mission to “to democratize the academia - industry relationship”, the firm has won projects worth Rs. 15 lakhs within the first three months of its inception, and is in negotiation with many prospective clients. IIT Roorkee has always been a center of technical excellence and entrepreneurial spirit. Together with the enactment of effective steps like the Deferred Placement Program, the institute aims to foster the development of future leaders, who will guide the nation in its path to holistic development.

It is against this backdrop that we present the first issue of the official technical magazine of IEEE,IIT Roorkee chapter, the GeekGazette. Through this magazine, we aim to inform the readers of the latest technical developments in the field of Electronics and Computer Science around the globe, with a special focus on our institute. We aim foremost to learn, and then to enlighten you, the reader about technology around you, how you can use it better, and how its latest developments will affect the world you live in. GeekGazette is a potpourri of articles on technology and IITR, and how they influence each other. We hope that through this magazine, we are able to make you enjoy and learn, and learn and enjoy!

We extend our sincerest thanks to Prof. S.N. Sinha whose invaluable guidance and unstinting support has made this endeavor possible.

Regards The GeekGazette Team 1

Tips, tricks and tweaks to set on fire Firefox and let IE-7 give you a power drive to the World Wide Web. No need of a faster modem or a faster connection. All you have to do is to customize your PC to your own settings.

The Most Effective Tool

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uman-readable names like www.google.com are easy for people to remember, but they don't do machines any good. All machines use numerical IP addresses to refer to one another. For example, the machine that humans refer to as www.google.com has the IP address 208.67.217.230. Every time you use a domain name, you use the Internet's domain name servers (DNS) to translate the human-readable domain name into the machine-readable IP address.

If the DNS server you are using takes longer to translate you may experience slow internet connectivity. However, you can easily switch to another DNS server to get better response.

I, for myself, found that the OPENDNS server runs faster than the one we presently use.

To configure the OPENDNS Server: 1. Go to your active connection.

2. Right click on it and go to Properties.

3. Go to Networking tab.

4. Select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) 5. Click on Properties.

6. Now set the following properties: Preferred DNS server to 208.67.222.222 Alternate DNS server to 208.67.220.220 Restart to activate the new settings

Fire the Fox...Speed up Mozilla Firefox 1. Type "about:config" into the Mozilla Firefox address bar and hit return.

2. Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true".

3. Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true" 4. Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once. (Normally the browser makes one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining, it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.)

5. Right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer.

Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". (This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives)

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asterfox is a Mozilla Firefox addon that provides an interface to tweak some performance related settings such as browser network connection, cache, timings, as well as provide an optional feature which forces link “prefetching�. These changes can decrease (or if sub-optimally set, increase) page loading time.

With Fasterfox prefetching enabled, the browser will prefetch all links on a page in the background.

Subsequently, if (or when) one or more of those links is clicked; only a fraction of the time to load the page will be used, since the page has already been cached.

When enabled in Fasterfox, Firefox will prefetch all links with various extensions, except those links it deems to be dynamic content by URL. Moreover Fasterfox adds a small timer clock on the bottom of the browser which tells you the time it takes for the page to load.

1. Counterstrike; 2. WiFi; 3. iPhone; 4. Pixel; 5. Google; 6. Maya; 7. Linux; 8. CERN; 9. Syndication; 10. Cell; 11. LarryPage; 12. Java; 13. Thunderbird; 14.ASIMO; 15. Nibble; 16. Macintosh; 17. Windows7; 18. Nihilanth; 19. Yahoo!; 20. Worms

Answers to Crossword: 2

Speeding up Internet Explorer 7

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Use of ClearType with IE7 has been reported to slow IE7 performance. You can disable Cleartype in IE7 by going to: Tools->Internet Options->Advanced and then moving the slider on the right until you see Always use ClearType for HTML*, at which point you can uncheck that option.

utomatically checking for RSS feeds is reported to slow IE7 performance. Most people don't use this feature (if you don't know what it is, you aren't using it), and you can turn this off by going to: Tools->Internet Options->Content->Feeds->Settings and then uncheck all boxes.

Increase the default connection of Internet Explorer from 2 to 6 which in return will increase the speed of your browser!

Follow the steps exactly: 1. Go to Start -> Run and type regedit in the open dialog box and hit OK. 2. On the left hand side of the registry editor, click the + sign next to HKEY_CURRENT_USER to expand the list of folders and expand the following folder as well: Software Microsoft Window CurrentVersion.

3. Click on Internet Settings so you can view its contents.

4. Now, on the right hand side of the registry look for the following two values: MaxConnectionsPerServer and MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server.If these values are present, right-click on the first value MaxConnectionsPerServer, and select Modify from the drop-down menu, click Decimal, and set the Value field to 6. Do the same thing for MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server; right-click on MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server and select Modify from the drop-down menu, click Decimal, and set the value to 6.

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“Micromouse” is a robotic mouse designed to solve a maze in the shortest possible time. The standard maze is made up of a 16 by 16 grid of cells, each 180 mm square with walls 50 mm high. The mouse will need to keep track of where it is, discover walls as it explores, map out the maze and detect when it has reached the goal. micromouse events require participants to develop the fastest robotic rodents and are widely held in UK, US, Japan, Singapore, India and South Korea. Two enterprising second yearites from electronics, Pulkit Gupta and Aayush Rai are currently developing a micromouse and hope to complete its implementation by end of March.

Technology Involved A micromouse can majorly be either stepper motor based or dc motor based. “We are working on a dc motor micromouse which uses hacked servo motors because they are extremely light and efficient”, says Pulkit. “We use optical rotary encoders to detect the motion of the wheels and side wall reflective infra-red sensors which are modulated at 2 kHz to cancel out the ambient light. We are using Atmega 32 as the brain of the mouse which performs all the basic functions. The body of the mouse is made up of a plastic like material called perplex.

The wheels are made up of aluminum with holes drilled in them to reduce weight. We are using the Bellman Flood algorithm for solving the maze.”

Current Status Working on the project since March 2008, Aayush and Pulkit had originally intended the project for Cognizance 2008, but unfortunately could not arrange a programmer for the microcontroller. However, they took up the challenge to complete the micromouse in this year and have perfected its body. We wish the duo all the best and look forward to successful completion of their endeavor.

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How and why it works Assume that you are an IIT Roorkee alumnus standing at the main gate on the day of your 25th reunion. You plan to visit all the departments during the course of the day, and return by evening.

Wondering about the paths that could be taken to achieve this purpose, you run back to your lab and do some basic DNA computing.

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hances are, you have never heard of DNA computing. And yet, it is the single most innovative development in the world of computing in the past two decades. It works on the concept of utilizing the chemical reactions between the DNA base pairs for computational processes. Also, DNA stores genetic information much the same way a hard disk stores data. In fact, the power of DNA computing can be estimated from the fact that just one pound of DNA has the capacity to store more information than all the electronic computers ever built!

A 1 cubic centimeter DNA computer would be able to hold 10 TERABYTES of data, and perform 10 trillion calculations at a time. The Guinness World Records has recognized the computer as "the smallest biological computing device" ever constructed.

1. You assign a code to each department in terms of DNA base pairs A,T,G, and C (eg AT for E&C dep, AG for Mech, etc). Strand of DNA containing ATAG would then represent a path from E&C dept to Mech dept.

2. These molecules are mixed in a test tube. A chain of these strands represents a possible answer.

3. Because of the random chemical intercombination of the various DNA strands, all the possible sequences are generated in a few seconds.

4. The molecules containing impossible combinations of base pairs are then eliminated by highly sequence specific enzyme reactions.

The sequences of DNA bases of the remaining molecules represent all the paths you may take to complete your tour.

DNA computing was conceived by Leonard Adleman in 1994. Three years later, researchers at the University of Rochester developed logic gates made of DNA. On April 28, 2004, scientists at the Weizmann Institute, Israel, announced that they had constructed the first DNA 'computer', which is simply a clear solution in a test tube containing a cocktail of various DNA combinations and can be deciphered for information using chemical means. However, DNA computing is still very much in its infancy, and it may be a couple of decades before a commercial DNA computer makes its way into regular use.

The distinct advantage of this process is the use of parallel processing. Millions of DNA strands combine at the same time, thus producing millions of possible paths almost instantaneously. However, the process of narrowing down the results through chemical reactions is indeed tedious and time consuming. In the future, some speculate, there may be hybrid machines that use traditional silicon for normal processing tasks but have DNA co-processors that can take over tasks they are specifically suited for.

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I

n the late 1880s, an unusual “War of currents� was brewing within the scientific community. The famous Thomas Alva Edison and George Westinghouse had become adversaries due to Edison's promotion of direct current (DC) for electric power distribution over alternating current (AC) advocated by Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla. In an attempt to promote their opinion that AC transmission was deadly and so should not be used for transmission, Edison and Brown began to advocate the AC electric chair for executions. On August 16, 1890, Edison faced the litmus test of his opinion on the dangers on AC, when William Kemmler in Auburn prison became the first person to be electrocuted.

But, the passage of current had only made him unconscious and failed to stop his heart and breathing. All hell broke loose when Kremmler woke up with a start and the workers were hurriedly ordered to try and electrocute him again. The generator needed time to re-charge, however and in the second attempt a few minutes later, Kemmler was shocked with 2,000 volts! Due to this shock, blood vessels under his skin ruptured and bled and his body caught fire. In all, the entire execution took approximately eight minutes. A reporter who witnessed it reported that the execution was "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging."

This mistake on the part of Edison proved once and for all that AC was not so harmful if exposed to for short intervals of time, and this is the reason we receive AC, and not DC transmission to our homes today!

However, destiny had fated otherwise. After the first 17-second passage of AC through Kemmler, he did not move, and everyone assumed that he had died.

First nuclear power station ordered; First 345 Kilovolt transmission line

Electricity is marketed on the internet for the first time

Thales of Miletus describes static electricity.

600BC

1920

00 19

1800 1 82 6

188 2 First hydroelectric station opens at Wisconsin, USA

8 1839 18 2

Highest voltage transmission line 60 Kilovolt

Italian scientist Alessandro Volta invents the first electric battery

2

195

175

First U.S. station to use only pulverized coal

Benjamin Franklin demonstrates lightning is actually electricity

166 0

3

99 19

Otto von Guericke invents a machine to produce static electricity

Sir William Robert Grove develops the first fuel cell in UK 5

Ă nyos Jedlik develops the first electric motor in Hungary

Georg Simon Ohm formulates the Ohm's Law

However, after the war, during his stint at Caltech, the real genius of Feynman came to the forefront. It was here that Feynman developed his theory of Quantum Electrodynamics and successfully developed the rules that all quantum field theories must obey for which he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965. However despite contributing immensely to Quantum Mechanics, he once famously said, “I think, I can safely assume that nobody on this earth understands Quantum Mechanics.” His series of lectures at Caltech was released as The Feynman Lectures on Physics, which remain the Bible of physics at the undergraduate level. He also made significant contributions to the theory of super-fluidity of super-cooled helium and put forward the idea of a weak nuclear force.

R .P Fe y n m a n , th e name, perhaps, needs no introduction. For, the fact remains that, Feynman was one of those few 'unusual' men -a paragon yet so accessible, a genius yet so humble, eccentric yet outrageous at times – qualities that made him one of the most popular and revered scientists of the 20th century.

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orn in New York City on May 18, 1918 Feynman started showing early signs of a scientist by not uttering even a single word till about his third birthday (in common with other greats like Einstein!). He had a special knack for repairing radios and even owned a miniature lab while he was still a school-goer. Having a frightening command over mathematics and physics, he used to say –“No real man ever paid attention to poetry and such things!” He went on to complete his B.Sc. from MIT in 1939 and then did his Ph.D. from Princeton University. Thereafter, he got involved in the infamous Manhattan Project that eventually resulted in the first atomic bomb. Interestingly, Feynman developed quite a reputation as a safe-cracker while at Los Alamos and once even cracked a safe containing the most secret and classified documents related to the atomic bomb. Later he also recounted how he was perhaps the only person to see the first ever atomic bomb test at Trinity with the naked human eye as he considered that even a truck windshield would be enough to block the UV radiation and that dark goggles were unnecessary.

In his later years, Feynman served on the Rogers Commission to investigate the causes of the Challenger (NASA's space shuttle) disaster. In his usual no-nonsense way, he demonstrated the failure of o-ring seals (used in booster rockets) to withstand sub-zero temperatures, even dipping a similar o-ring seal in a glass of ice-cooled water in front of other committee members to drive home his point.

Feynman was unfortunate in contracting an abdominal cancer in the early 1980s but even that couldn't bog down a freewheeler like him. He continued to lecture at Caltech until about two weeks before his death. But that was exactly how he had always lived his life. His enthusiasm, his humour was infectious, to say the least. Add to this his insatiable curiosity and his sense of pleasure of finding things out and you end up with the perfect embodiment of the spirit of science – the spirit of Feynman, for only Feynman could have cracked a joke on his deathbed, his last words being –“I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring.”

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H

ave you noticed the common feature among many newly launched products, be it electronics gadgets or cars? It is the prominence of “green technology” that all companies in different sectors are striving to associate their products with.

The manufacturing sector seems to be waking up towards working for a sustainable future, with more and more eco-friendly substitutes for our present and future demands being researched and developed. The subsidies provided by governments across the world towards promoting green processes provide a further impetus to the development of these healthy alternatives, which may soon develop into technologies of the future.

Here we present a lowdown on some “cool” Green Gadgets which are fast becoming the latest fad and take us a step closer to a greener tomorrow.

Communication · At the world IT show held in Seoul from June 17-20, Samsung unveiled the W510 and the F268, its new eco-friendly phones. Natural plastic extracted from corn has been put to use in the manufacturing and heavy metals like lead, cadmium, etc have been done away with. Further, the coating being used is water soluble. As one would expect, Samsung is not alone in this race to launch eco-friendly phones. · Nokia has announced its plans to launch 40 new biodegradable phones – the so-called “Green Mobile Phones” in India this year. They have already launched their first such phone – the Nokia 3110 Evolve, 65% of whose body is made of biodegradable materials. The phone also comes with Nokia's most efficient charger till date, which consumes 94% less energy than that specified by Energy Star requirements. Eventually, Nokia plans to use PLA (Polyacetic Acid) with plant and other biomass-based modifiers that are renewable materials. According to Nokia, they have eliminated the use of PVC in all their phones. Sony Ericsson has also come up with a similar phone called the Greenheart Eco Phone. · LG has come out with a solar Bluetooth hands-free car kit in May 2008. The gadget comes with a solar panel and can be mounted on the windscreen of your car with the help of cup suction. Eventually, as you travel in your car, the charging takes place and officially around two hours of charging time gives you one hour of talk-time.

Of Cars and Computers · Dell has launched a new addition to its Studio line of PCs called the Studio Hybrid. The name will seem apt when you draw an analogy with fuel efficient and environment friendly hybrid cars and vehicles. At just 197 mm X 72 mm X 212 mm, it is approximately 80 per cent smaller than an average desktop PC. According to official specifications, the PC consumes as much as 70% less power than an average desktop PC. The glossy bamboo finish of PCs provide the gadget with some extra “Green points”, while adding an exotic feel to the machine. · Not to be left behind in the new green revolution, Honda has launched a new variant of its already existing model the Civic, called the Honda Civic Hybrid on June 18, 2008 in India. The car has got an automatic switching mechanism that makes the car switch from battery power to petrol and vice-versa according to the riding conditions and the status of battery charging. A special mechanism called “regenerative braking mechanism” has been put to use in this car. It is a mechanism that reduces vehicle speed by converting some of its kinetic energy into another useful form of energy.

Unlike conventional braking where friction is used for reducing speed and energy gets lost as heat, here energy is stored that can be used later for driving the car by charging the battery. · Volkswagen has come up with Bluemotion Concept cars and has launched a Bluemotion version of its already famous models like the Polo and the Passat. A striking feature of these cars is the low CO2 emissions and the fuel efficiency. Special low resistance tyres and a more efficient, evolved gearing mechanism ensure the same. The cars have also been aerodynamically modeled specially to reduce the air drag and save fuel.

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F

lash back to 1978 – the Journal of Physics features a research paper entitled “Photoluminescence excitation of Saxena's Deep Donor in AlGaAs” written by three scientists from Philips Research Laboratory, Netherlands. The “Saxena” mentioned in the title of the paper is none other than Professor A.K. Saxena from the department of Electronics & Computer Engineering. And yes, it was he who discovered the eponymous donor level in Gallium Aluminium Arsenide (GaAlAs) that was to strongly impact the future development of semiconductor devices. In recognition of his invaluable contribution to this field, the title of “Saxena's Deep Donor” was formally bestowed upon his research subject by the Philips Research Laboratory, Netherlands.

]

]

Saxena’s Deep Donor Level

[

Prof. Saxena had all the qualities of a promising researcher since college.

At BITS Pilani, h e w a s awarded the Gold Medal in graduate studies in 1971, and went on to pursue his Master of Engineering in semiconduct or devices. It was during this time that he developed a passion for semiconductor technology which was to stay with him for the rest of his life. It was this passion which later won him the Young Scientist Gold Medal, conferred by the then Prime Minister, Smt Indira Gandhi. Post Master's, Prof Saxena took up the study of opto-electronic devices as the subject of his Ph.D. His research was carried out at Scheffield University, UK, which at that time possessed one of the most advanced infrastructure and state-of-the-art technology in semiconductors. As he was working in his lab one warm afternoon, the idea of experimenting with a hitherto unobserved doping level in gallium aluminium arsenide occurred to him.

Why Gallium Arsenide?

]

The main problem with conventional silicon devices is that though one can change their application through design, one cannot increase their speed beyond a certain limit. Silicon devices work at relatively low frequency levels, and so cannot be used to fabricate high speed devices, and eventually a bottleneck is reached. The speed of electronic devices can be increased substantially only by changing the basic building material of the devices.

One such material that promises to push this limit on the frequency of operation is gallium arsenide. As might be expected, due to their much higher speed, devices made from gallium arsenide will replace those made Structure of GaAs from silicon in the future.

Moreover, GaAs can be used to fabricate almost all types of devices ranging from optical devices to high frequency microwave devices and electrical devices. Finally, silicon can be used to integrate only ICs and different types of circuits, whereas Gallium Arsenide can be used to integrate not only ICs and different types of circuits, but optical components and electrical components as well. Thus, it has the potential to fabricate complete systems in future.

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[

‘Saxena's Deep Donor Level’

] [

India and Semiconductors

]

Admittedly, gallium arsenide devices are the future. However, presently India is far behind even in s i l i c o n technology.

M a t e r i a l development technology is almost absent Semiconductor Wafer here. We only process imported material. So, we are fully dependent on foreign suppliers for our semiconductor devices. Moreover, the $6 billion Indian semiconductor industry is also facing major problems in the wake of the global meltdown, with an appreciable slump in its growth rate.

Initially, optical devices made from GaAs (such as lasers) had two serious limitations: 1. The threshold current for lasing was very high.

2. The life of the devices was short.

Moreover, both these parameters degraded rapidly with lowering of temperature. However, it was difficult to explain these trends at that time.

The 'deep donor level' that Prof Saxena experimented so extensively with, helped scientists decipher the mystery behind these trends. The said donor level is resonant with the lowest conduction band in GAlAs and so could not be detected by any electrical or optical technique. Prof Saxena was the first to observe this level by pulling it down into the band gap and studying the electrical and optical properties by subjecting GaAlAs to high stress.

Using this technique, he discovered a previously unobserved doping level of gallium aluminium arsenide. Moreover, he was able to obtain a detailed characteristic of band structure of that doping level of gallium arsenide and used it to explain the Gunn Effect.

According to Prof Saxena – “Electronics is now an integral part of almost engineering disciplines through the application and use of instrumentation which employ semiconductor devices in one form or the other. If we rely exclusively on import of semiconductors to meet our national demands, a time may come when we might feel handicapped to perform further research in this direction. Therefore, it is in order that our national planners should give serious thought to initiate material growth and propagation within the country.”

The good new is that for the semiconductor industry, the manufacturing index (the ratio of total Market to total available market) currently nears 0.45, which means that the local production meets only 45% of the total demand. This proves that there is still a lot of untapped potential in the country in this field, and proper policies and incentives are necessary to make this industry selfreliant. We already have the technical expertise, manpower, and the capital to usher in such a revolution. The Geek Gazette hopes that the future will see an increased investment in the semiconductor industry, and make India the preferred global destination for its development.

Galium Arsenide - Band Diagram

To make efficient and long-lasting devices and thus overcome the limitation with GaAlAs devices, it had been an absolute necessity to understand the physico-chemical origin of this level. Once this was achieved by Prof Saxena’s research, material designers were able to create conditions in the growth reactor to practically grow GaAs without such a level.

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The science in science fiction movies is atrocious!

What do their technical advisors get paid for in any case? Here are some science errors that force us to think a lot: Some movies showed sound in space. Is it possible that sound is traveling in vacuum? The Star Wars Trilogy's biggest legacy is sound in outer space. All those roaring engines of spaceships may be very exciting but the fact remains that sound doesn't travel in a vacuum (like outer space).The biggest transgressors are most of today's sci-fi. Anything from Star Wars and Battlestar Galactic to Lost In Space.

What would an explosion in outer space look like? Well, for one there wouldn't be any flames (fire needs oxygen - a substance missing in outer space) and there wouldn't be any "boom" noise. In Starship Troopers the huge starships orbiting over the bugs' home planet explodes and actually catches fire – with the fires licking upwards!

Not only this, there are errors in instantaneous radio communication. In Star Trek they have something called "sub-space signals" – whatever that may be! But it guarantees instantaneous radio communication between space ships that are thousands of light years away from each other. In Capricorn One, an astronaut on Mars has a realtime conversation with his mother back on earth. In reality, radio signals from Mars would take about twenty minutes or so to reach the earth, so there would have been considerable pauses between questions and replies.

Thankfully, there are exceptions too. Contact makes good use of the fact that "Space is very big". In its opening shot, as the camera zooms away from Earth, we soon realize that the radio transmissions emanating from it are getting older and older. Soon there is complete silence – even at the speed of light radio and television signals haven't penetrated that far beyond our planet into outer space! Beautifully designed to make one feel the relative insignificance of our petty selves compared to the infinite vastness of space.

Text credit: www.scifimoviepage.com 10

7

With the proliferation of mobile phones in our lives, we are regularly inundated with jargon like 3G, GPRS, CDMA, etc. How and when did these technologies evolve? What are their relative benefits? And what exactly do we mean when we refer to 2G, 2.5G, 3G, etc? In this article we present answers to these questions against the backdrop of the mobile telephony evolution.

2.5 G - GPRS

1st Generation (Introduction of cell phones)

connections. Also browsers like Opera Mini and Skyfire have come up that enable opening of actual versions of websites rather than being restricted to the mobile phone-specific versions. Incorporation of High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) makes for the 3.5G standard.

Although not officially released, it is being called as HSPA+ or evolved HSPA. As per theoretical calculations it is expected to provide a maximum download speed of 42 Mbps (about 3 times the maximum today) and upload speed of 22 Mbps. B3G systems will utilize diverse access technologies to deliver the best possible services to subscribers. Rather than targeting multi-megabit/s capability per user, the objective of B3G is to allow users to connect through a variety of devices, anywhere, at a wide range of speeds.

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Beyond 3G (B3G) or Pre 4th Generation

3rd Generation – The Universal Mobile Telecommunication

3.5 G - HSPA

2.75 G - EDGE

2nd Generation

0th Generation (Mobile Radio Telephone)

Mobile networks have been ever evolving, Following 0G came the 1G, which was starting from 0G (0th generation) dating introduced in the 1980s. This was an analog cell back to 1946 when Motorola in phone standard wherein the system used analog conjunction with the Bell System radio signals and the voice was simply modulated to a operated the first commercial higher frequency range of about 150MHz. Neither 0G nor Mobile Telephone Service 1G introduced data services or what we know as mobile MTS in the US. web; they were restricted to voice services. However this was the period that saw the shift from the old analog to the modern digital signals.

The commencement of mobile internet was brought about by the introduction of 2G which was commercially launched on the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) standard in Finland in 1991. The The real mobile web experience primary benefits of 2G were the use of digital encryption, started with the introduction of 2.5G more widespread network, more load handling and systems facilitating GPRS (General introduction of data services for the mobile users – Packet Radio Service). It provides data including the Short Messaging Service ( SMS). rates from 56 up to 114 Kbit/s by packetswitching protocols and shorter setup time for ISP connections. GPRS came to be used for The next major accomplishment in mobile services such as WAP access, SMS, internet was EDGE (Enhanced Data Rate for GSM MMS and for other services such as Evolution), more commonly referred to as 2.75G. email and Web Access.

EDGE is an upgrade that provides a three-fold increase in capacity of GSM/GPRS networks, achieving higher data-rates by switching to more sophisticated methods of coding, within existing GSM timeslots. It provides data rates of 384 kbps It offers better and wider range of and above, which is about 3 times that offered by GPRS. services as compared to 2G through It was mainly put in use by operators like Blackberry improved spectral efficiency. Diverse for providing services such as mobile email. wireless transmission technologies are being deployed, including Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) and Digital Video 3G has changed the way mobile web has been Broadcast (DVB) for wide area enabling streaming of videos and music and also broadcasting, fixed wireless access allowing the display of flash content which were a and Wireless Local Area nightmare to download on the normal GPRS or EDGE

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veryone knows that plotting miniscule data points on the graph paper grid, and joining them to form a 'smooth' curve is not the best part of labwork. Many lab incharges, however, allow you to use computer generated plots in files and it is a boon to have MATLAB do this tricky job for you in a jiffy. MATLAB may be used to generate 2D plots in two basic ways: Plotting the Plot

MATLAB and Curve Fitting

1. Open MATLAB. The major central space is named “Command window”, and there are 2 windows to the left – Workspace/Current Directory and History. If any of these windows is missing, open in by going to Menu -> Window -> (Desired Window) 2. In the Command Window, type x = [xValue1 xValue2 xValue3…]; where xValue1 is the actual first x coordinate you wish to plot, and so on, and press enter 3. Next, type y = [yValue1 yValue2 yValue3…]; where yValue1 is the corresponding first y coordinate you wish to plot, and so on, and press enter 4. Type plot(x,y); press enter and voila! The plot appears in separate window entitled 'Figure'.

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Note that number of data points x and y must be equal in number for the plot to be drawn. You can also create a grid in the figure by typing grid on; and can title the axes by using xlabel('yourXchoice'); and ylabel('yourYchoice');. Type help plot or press F1 for more options.

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The problem with plot(x,y); is that it doesn't provide the luxury of fitting a smooth curve onto the data points.

This calls for a completely new way of plotting data using MATLAB – the curve fitting toolbox.

Follow steps 1 to 3 of “Plotting the Plot” on the left.

Type cftool and press enter.

Click on Data.

There are three drop down lists: one each for X Data, Y Data, and Weights. The drop down lists contain all the variables that you have defined in MATLAB in the current session.

Select the X Data as 'x' from the drop down list, and Y Data as 'y'.

Click on 'Create Data Set'. The data points get plotted in the 'Curve Fitting Tool' Window. The next step would be to fit a curve onto the data points.

Click on 'Fitting'. In the window that appears, click on 'New Fit'. Many options now get enabled.

Select the 'Type of Fitting' from the drop down list, and the suboption from the corresponding menu just below.

Click on 'Apply' (or check 'Immediate apply') to apply the selected method of curve fitting, and check in the Curve Fitting Tool window if the curve suits your purpose.

You may have to experiment with a few types of fit to get the best result. In my experience, higher order polynomial fitting is generally good enough. Refer MATLAB help for more on Curve Fitting Toolbox.

Printing the curve 1. Click on File -> “Print to figure” 2. A new figure gets opened. Click on File -> Save As. Choose to Save as Type “Bitmap file(*.bmp)”, get it printed, and you're ready to paste a tidy, accurate plot onto your practical file In the euphoria that follows, do not forget to ask permission of your Lab Incharge before using the computer generated plots!

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ince the beginning of its time, peer to peer file transfer has been mired in controversy. The first such service, created by Shawn Fanning (the real Napster) in 1999 was ruthlessly shut down in 2001, but it paved the way for the evolution of 'torrents' which use a decentralized peer to peer file sharing platform.

However, torrents are still widely disputed due to ease of piracy and a major strain on network resources. As they require a direct connection between the sender and a host, they do not work from behind NAT firewall used in many institutional networks.

Once the download has been completed, you can simply 'relay' it to your computer once the file 'is ready to be downloaded' by clicking 'Save' in the torrent download window. Take care that as a basic user, closing the browser while the download is in progress will cancel your download. You can relay the file simultaneously with the torrent download by clicking on 'Fast Save' in torrentrelay download window for most files.

To use this feature: · Log on to www.torrentrelay.com as a basic user · Click on 'Full Client' · Click on 'Add Torrent' · Add the Torrent File ID* in appropriate box · Click on 'Fetch ID' · Check the torrent you want to download, and click 'Start Torrent’

In our institute also, peer to peer file sharing is unavailable for direct use. However, an innovative solution has recently been developed which promises to circumvent this problem without breaking any legal or ethical codes of conduct

*Torrent File ID can be found thus: go to any of the supported BitTorrent index site (isohunt.com, mininova.com, etc), and search for the file you want to download. The ID will be a multi digit number appearing in the URL in the address bar of your browser. The actual position of this number in URL is different for various sites, but is easily distinguishable.

www.torrentrelay.com is a web based torrent download site started in 2007, which downloads torrents the same way web sites get downloaded to your browser (via http). Right now, the site is in development phase and fairly buggy, so you may get too many 'Service too busy' messages and the download speed may sometimes be below par, but it looks like an end to torrent troubles in the long run.

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Project Head: Prof. H.K.Verma

Total Outlay: INR 36.667 Million The first thing that strikes you about www.uttara.in is its sheer exhaustiveness. The Uttara portal comprises 226 websites, 7 sub portals, and a plethora of services. Picture this: apart from a comprehensive description of the diverse aspects of Roorkee, the website even provides the location, specialties, and average meal cost of 14 eateries in the town! And such information and more is in place for 58 towns and cities, which can be accessed through a very user friendly interface - a map of Uttarakhand. Such an endeavour is the first of its kind in India, and is inspiring many other states to develop their own IT based governance solutions.

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he project swung into action following a January 2003 request to IIT Roorkee by the Government of Uttarakhand (GoU) to provide technical leadership in the IT initiatives of the government, the most important of which was e-Governance. The first step towards setting up an IT based service delivery system was to assess the services needed by the citizens. Nainital district was then chosen for implementing this UNDP funded pilot project code named Janadhar (people-based). It was a success, and 26 Janadhar Suchna Kutirs (JSK) are providing valuable information and services to far-flung villages in Nainital using VSAT or broadband connectivity.

GoU, encouraged by the success of this pilot project, handed over a self funded project to IIT Roorkee to strengthen and expand the Uttara portal and the Janadhar program. A new chain of government services has also been started under the name Janadhar e-Service and Information Center (JeSIC). Work is going on in the third pilot project, funded by the Government of India to expand these services to the 5 districts bordering Nepal and China, and implement a chain of Janadhar e-Community Information and Service Centers (JeCISCs).

However, this project has been fraught with technical complexities and political apathy. Providing good data connectivity to rural areas has been a major problem, and maintenance of the 30 installed VSAT units is difficult. However, VSAT units seem to be the only viable solution. The lackadaisical attitude of state government departments has also posed serious bottlenecks in the smooth running of the project. It has taken a passionate and dedicated effort on part of the team to develop and implement the project successfully in remote areas of the state.

The ultimate aim of this project is to usher in paperless e-Governance in the state, where all transactions shall be in 'soft' form capitalizing on the power of modern technology. No application need be made by citizens on paper, no certificates or documents need be issued by the government on paper, and no paper files need be maintained by government offices. Possibly, every government office of the state will shrink into a laptop or a PDA. The change will apparently be revolutionary, both in concept and implementation.

Special Manpower Development for VLSI Design – Phase 2 Project Coordinator: Prof D. K. Mehra

CoCoordinator: Dr. S.Dasgupta

Total Outlay: INR 5.9 Million

With the advent of VLSI devices, a large number of deign laboratories sprung up in India. Many of the US based companies started outsourcing designing of VLSI devices to India. However, India didn't have sufficient amount of manpower to meet the requirements. Furthermore, a drastic worldwide growth of electronic industry occurred simultaneously and warranted a large amount of manpower to maintain the industry. This prompted the Ministry of Information Technology (MIT) to take an initiative to develop manpower in India. Apart from Electronics, students from fields, such as physics, electrical engineering and chemical engineering can also become a part of this project if they have an interest in and some basic knowledge of semiconductor devices.

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According to Dr. S.Dasgupta, “B.Tech students (with electronics and electrical background) are most welcome to use the facilities of the lab. They should however come prepared to do some real hard work and creating basic fundamental knowledge in this area takes time. Your general interest in this area should be paramount while assuming any work in this lab“

An SMDP lab has been established in the department to develop the designs of VLSI circuits. However, though the designs produced by the institute using various softwares like Cadence, Magma, etc are highly appreciated; it currently lacks infrastructure to actually fabricate the circuits designed. For this, FPGA/CPLD based experiments are conducted which help to verify the design on real silicon to a certain extent.

The prerequisites for a student to become a part of the project are as follows: 1. Knowledge of semiconductor devices: Basic knowledge of MOSFETs, their working principles, their output and transfer characteristics.

2. Knowledge of digital circuits: Knowledge of circuits such as adders, subtractors, etc and their working.

The project has been a great success till now. However, there is requirement of more manpower to meet the industrial requirements. The project has brought many novel research results to fore as well, evident from around 50 international papers published by the various faculty members and students associated with the project during initial 3 years of the project.

Collaboration in Research & Development of New Investigator: Dr. V.H. Saran Curriculum in Sound and Vibration PrincipalTotal Outlay: INR 45.8 Million In metro cities, people take to sedentary work while commuting long distances to their workplace. However, both trains and buses offer a lot of vibration which affects their comfort level while performing such sedentary work. In the European Union (EU), there exist certain standards for vibration limit. But these standards do not take into account the effects of low frequency vibrations experienced in transit on trains or buses. Thus, a collaborative project, CIRCIS was initiated to study the effects of low frequency vibration on sedentary activity so that new standards may be recommended.

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Skin Response (GSR), skin temperature, heart rate, and heart rate variability values. A group of twenty-one subjects with different habits, comfort postures and physiological states has been chosen to conduct the observations.

he studies are being conducted on the 3-axis vibration simulator developed at Vehicle Dynamics Laboratory, Mechanical Engineering Department, IIT Roorkee. The simulator room has a controlled environment where temperature, humidity and noise-level can be adjusted. The onboard vibration is measured using a tri-axial accelerometer and the signal is sent to Lab View Signal Express. A recorded sound of a train is reproduced using external PC speakers and sound levels recorded using sound meter. Air velocity is kept constant. Seating consists of a rigid steel-frame thin-foam cushion chair. Three levels of temperature: 150C, 250C, 350C, three levels of humidity: 50%, 65%, 80% and 4 levels of noise: 63 dB, 73 dB, 83 dB, 93 dB have been chosen for the study.

The project combines fields as disparate as acoustics and vibrations, ergonomics, biomedicine and psychology. The results of the experiments show that a person's comfort level in performing a sedentary activity is affected maximum in the horizontal direction. The cushioning effect of the lap generally reduces the effect of vibrations in the vertical direction. This low frequency vibration can also have long-term effects on the health of sensitive people such as lowering of the rate of heart beat. The project is expected to come up with standards for vibration levels that are within the limits of a comfortable work environment which will help in developing more flexible vehicles offering high performance, efficient space utilization and high comfort at a low price

Presently, the work involves the study of human discomfort of passengers subject to whole body random vibrations; environmental factors such as temperature, humidity; and noise level variations by assessing their effect on various physiological parameters like pulse rate, respiration rate, Galvanic 15

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t is the 'most powerful brand' in corporate world, and its unofficial logo is 'Don't Be Evil'. Yes folks, this is none other than the golden boy of the world of internet, Google Inc. Using a conceptually simple algorithm, Google has forever altered the way we surf. But there's even more. Google provides a host of operators designed to constrain the search to specific data entries, file types, etc. A quick list of operators and their usage can be obtained by 'googling' for “Google Help : Cheat Sheet”. We present here some of the more useful operators and their usage:

Logical Operators OPERATOR USAGE DESCRIPTION AND IIT AND Roorkee finds pages having both IIT AND Roorkee OR IIT OR Roorkee finds pages with IIT or Roorkee Omit a word IIT –Roorkee finds pages containing IIT but NOT Roorkee Exact Word IIT +Roorkee finds pages containing the exact word “Roorkee” Exact Phrase “IIT Roorkee” finds pages containing exactly that phrase Synonyms ~student finds pages with student/graduate/scholar etc Wild Card IIT * Roorkee finds pages with IIT and Roorkee separated by other words The various operators can be combined to be put to best use. For example, you may search for pages containing “IIT Roorkee” but not the word “students” by typing “IIT Roorkee” –Students Mathematical Operators like + - * / % and ^ work directly, making google a veritable simple online calculator

Advanced Operators Searching word definitions

Searching within a website

String to be Searched site:www.iitr.ac.in

Define:abracadabra gives various definitions of the word from around the world.

This query will search the contents of the iitr website only. However, be careful to specify the exact URL. Or better still, copy the URL of site to be searched from the address bar of your browser.

This method of finding word definitions is very fast and efficient, as you do not have to use cumbersome (and sometimes even paid) dictionary sites.

Searching for music

Searching for a filetype

String to be Searched filetype:A where A can be pdf, doc, cgi, csv, exe, etc

Intitle:“index of” mp3 beatles This will search the page titles for the string “index of” mp3 beatles, and return the mp3 listings of beatles songs. You can similarly search for any particular song in any format by making appropriate changes, and easily save it to your hard drive.

This option comes in handy when, for example, you are searching for essays/research papers/journal entries etc on a given topic. Just search for pdf files and you'll be amazed by the accuracy of results!

GeekGazette tip

The intitle: operator can also be used when you want web pages on a specific subject. For example, intitle:“corporate government” in the search field will return pages containing the term in their title itself.

Let us say for an instance that you are chatting with someone using Yahoo! messenger, and suddenly the person goes offline without even saying bye.

Smell something fishy? You can promptly go to www.yahooblockchecker.info, type in the Yahoo! ID of the person, and voila! Check out whether he/she is actually offline or has simply blocked you off.

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EDC Summit

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ver the past few years computer games have evolved tremendously. Along with the development in software, there has been a parallel revolution in gameplay hardware too. In this article, GeekGazette explores the latest innovation in this field, and teaches you how to use your webcam for much more realistic and exciting gameplay experience using visual cues as control inputs.

default options. Now show a pen or any object as controller. Once selected, the game gets paused, and you can use this time to center the controller where u want it to be. Click on the 'center to Z axis' option, and launch the game.

At the start of the game hit the left SHIFT and CAPSLOCK keys to initiate the controller and it lets you use the object as your game controller!

Once you've had enough of playing the game with your pen, go to the camspace website and you can download a printable steering wheel to play this game. This type of webcam based gameplay requires some practice to perfect, but once you get the hang of it, and start playing your favorites like NFS ProStreet using the printed steering wheel, we're sure you'll have no regrets kissing your keyboard and mouse goodbye!

To get started, log on to www.camspace.com and download the (absolutely free) c a m s p a c e application onto your computer. Install it and If your webcam has a slow frame rate, then select a game (say a bubble game) to get a basic increase the size of the object or increase the grasp of the procedure. Now click on 'lock the amount of lighting around the laptop. The more NASA object' and the application directs you to first technically inclined can also download an API and hide the object that you want to use and then a developers' package and use a pen to control a display it. The ‘object’ can be a simple pen, or computer in place of conventional input devices colored paper stuck onto you fingers. View the like the mouse or the joystick. camspace videos to get a good idea of how to select an object. Once you show the object, it automatically detects it as the controller you wish to use. Now simply move the object like a visual cue and play this game.

Next, we will tell you about a racing game that you can interact with. It is called “Ludorace”, and can be obtained easily by doing a Google search.

Download and install the game but don't start just yet.

Go back to www.camspace.com, and click on “game controllers”.

Select and download Ludorace game controller and open it with

GeekGazette Crossword 2

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ACROSS 2 A catchier name for the IEEE 802.11 standard 7 Mr. Torvalds, GNU, University of Helsinki.

10 The CPU of Play Station 3 gaming console is based on a _ _ _ _ Microprocessor developed by IBM 11 The first name is "Lawrence Edward". Remove 'Rank' from his creation you get his surname! His famous name?

13 Mozilla Foundation's free and open-source email client 14 Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility 16 Tiger, Cheetah, Puma, Leopard 18 The primary antagonist and final boss in Half Life 19 Yet another hierarchical officious oracle 20 Blaster, Sobig and Welchia DOWN 1 3 4 5 6 8 9 12 15 17

Wallhacks, Speedhacks, No recoil, ESP, Barrelhack The only xxx to beat the yyy, the new yyy 3G. what is yyy Popular name for a picture element.

I do not believe that the only key to access our culture (French) should be the automatic ranking by popularity.

Belongs to the league of Blender, AC3D & LightWorks.

European Organization for Nuclear Research Web feeds : "Really Simple _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ " "Oak" . Then "Green". Now an Indonesian Island with automated garbage collection Half a byte BlackComb to Vienna

Science and Man “Everywhere you look in science, the harder it becomes to understand the universe without God.” -Robert Herrmann “I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.”

-Marie Curie “It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”

-Albert Einstein “Science investigates religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power religion gives man wisdom which is control."

-Martin Luther King, Jr. “Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”

-Immanuel Kant “I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.”

-Richard Feynman