V5n1

MUSINGS FROM THE EDITORS' DESK

NERD HERD takes immense pleasure in welcoming you all to the first issue of academic year 2012-13, i.e. Volume 5 Number 1. On September 5, 2012 NERD completed its first five successful years of publication and hopes to continue with the same trends in days to come. We thank all the people from IIT Kanpur campus, IIT-K alumni and our authors from different other institutes for their valuable contributions and suggestions; sincerely hope you continue to play your part in making NERD reach new heights.

As been the trend, NERD V5N1 promises you a large spectrum of contents under its umbrella. The main story for this issue is The Discovery of Higgs Boson – The God Particle. Do look for the article by Sumit Sinha where he elegantly throws light on mysteries surrounding these particles and explains The Standard Model in a lucid way.

NERD is a great platform where one connects with his/her Alma mater. We have three articles authored by IIT-K alumni. 'Nuclear Forensics' by Manish Kumar briefly narrates the history behind this technology and answers some important question regarding the same. An article on psychology by Shantanu Misra demonstrates how role models influence the moral choices we make. The article is based on an interesting experiment conducted on IIT-K junta.

Interviews with faculty members and eminent researchers have been a regular and special feature of NERD. This time we made things somewhat different. We bring you our interview with Mr. V S K Murthy Balijepalli, a PhD research scholar from IIT Bombay and an entrepreneur in the field of Smart grids. He is the recipient of prestigious MIT Young Indian Innovator award and DST-Lockheed Martin Gold medal.

Articles from Science and Technology Council (SnT), Students' Gymkhana, IIT Kanpur form an integral part of NERD. We cover one article from the newly started BRaIN (Biological Research and Innovation Network), and two from Aero-modelling club and Robotics club.

As undergraduate research has always been one of the focus areas of NERD, we bring you two short reports on the work done by second and third year undergrads at IIT-K campus.

The first SCoPE talk (Science Communication and Public Engagement) of this academic year featured Professor Deepak Kumar from JNU. The talk was about making of a knowledge society in Indian context. Do find its review in this issue.

NERD has been known for creating fusions of science and arts. Under this umbrella, we bring you science fiction, science crossword and science cartoon.

At last, we would like to express our gratitude towards our faculty advisor Dr. Suchitra Mathur for all her valuable suggestions, and Dean, Research and Development Dr. A. K. Chaturvedi for supporting and funding NERD through his office.

Hope you enjoy our work. You can view soft copies of all our issues at www.iitk.ac.in/nerd . Please send us your feedback and suggestions at nerd@iitk.ac.in .

Cheers!

Editors NERD

1

COVER STORY

Sumit Sinha

Particle-de HIGGS

On July 4, 2012 when everyone was enjoying their summer vacations, there was something extraordinary that was being unravelled in Switzerland which would draw the attention of not only the scientific community but also the so called common man. Each and everyone who heard the news had their own opinions about this great achievement of the human intellect and its insatiable urge to know about how the nature functions. It was one of those rare instances where a discovery would take everyone into its grip. So th what is it that happened on July the 4 that caused such furore??????

For the past half a century a great many number of scientists throughout the world have been working day in and day out to prove the correctness of the “Standard Model” which establishes the laws that govern the dynamics of sub-atomic particles. This framework had correctly predicted everything which was later confirmed by precise experiments. The only obstacle which prevented the scientists to confidently say that this theory was correct was an elusive particle which had a mean life-time of just 0.000000000000000000000156 seconds and was thought to be the answer to the puzzling question as to how the particles acquire mass. This particle which sometimes is called the “God Particle” (though nothing holy about it) was the last building block of the Standard Model; it was called the “HIGGS boson”( “Higgs” because of the physicist Peter Higgs who first theorised the particle in 1964 and “boson” because it falls into this class of particles. We should be glad to know that one of the 2 men who laid down the laws of bosonic particles was our own Satyendra Nath Bose and the other one was the great Albert Einstein). For the last 20 years scientists at Cern and the Fermilab had been carrying out this seemingly impossible task to detect the Higgs. Initially in the 1990's the Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP) at Cern had been assigned the task to discover the Higgs but it could not find any trace of this particle and it's service came to an end in the year 2000. After this the task fell upon the Tevatron ( the collider that discovered 2

the Top Quark in 1995) at the Fermilab in U.S.A. This mission also failed to prove the existence of the Higgs but it reduced the range of the Higgs mass which brought it down between 114-180 GeV/c2. After this entered the Large Hadron Collider ( LHC), the super collider at Cern which in my view is the most complex experimental setup ever built. LHC is a 27 km long underground circular tunnel where very high energy proton beams, that are steered to move in a circular orbit with the help of super-conducting magnets (in which INDIA played a great role), are collided and this collision was expected to produce Higgs that has been hiding for the past 15 years. As I have already stated that the Higgs has a very small lifetime, very sensitive detectors were installed in the LHC which produced computer simulations of these high energy collisions.

This was by far the most ambitious scientific experiment that man had ever undertaken and the precision that this setup required was of the highest order. Finally the days went by and the atmosphere in Cern became full of anxiety because in a matter of few days the bible of particle physics “The Standard Model” was either going to crumble into pieces or would stand firm. Both the cases would have had serious implications and all the physics texts would have to be changed. If the LHC would not find the elusive Higgs all the laws of particle physics would have to be written again and it would have laid down the start of the new beginning but if the Higgs would be found then it would be regarded as a major triumph of science as we would have understood how everything works on the subatomic scale. If this would happen then it would be a great achievement of human intellect and this discovery would certainly fall into the class of discoveries like Newton's law of Gravity, Einstein's General Theory of Relativity etc. So now I think you people might have realised that a lot was at stake and something extraordinary was going to happen.

Finally the 4th of July 2012 arrived and a special meeting was organised at the Cern Headquarters and Peter Higgs was also called in this meeting. The whole

The Standard Model lays down the laws through auditorium was jam packed much before the scheduled which we come to know what matter is comprised of time of the meeting. A lot of media personnel were also and how the interactions between these particles present in the meeting. Everyone was anxious and could happen. This model comprises of 2 classes of sense that something special was going to be elementary particles called the Bosons and the announced. Finally the fate of the joint efforts of about Fermions. The Fermions are the particles that constitute 20,000 scientists and engineers was going to be decided the matter and Bosons are the particles that are the and also a new chapter was going to be added into every force carriers. This model very accurately lays down the physics text. So what was it going to be: Either the holy laws of interaction for the 3 forces of nature namely the grail of physics “'The Standard Model” would stand Electromagnetic Force, Strong Force and the Weak force. firmly which would mean that our eminent scientists One major drawback of this theory is that it is not able to like Peter Higgs, Abdus Salam, Steven Wienberg etc incorporate the force that seems pretty obvious to us worked on the correct path or the theory which had which is the Gravitational Force (There is another correctly predicted the results till now was going to fail theory named the String Theory in which all the four on the last hurdle. The stage was set and finally the forces are dealt with and for now it is our best tool to moment arrived. The director of Cern announced a create a unified theory which was the dream of particle consistent with the HIGGS boson has been Einstein). The Bosons are the particles that obey the confirmed at the approximate energy scale of 126 GeV. Bose-Einstein statistics and Fermions are the particles The serious looking scientists (though not always) burst that follow the Fermi- Dirac statistics. The main into cheers and a thundering applause echoed the whole difference between these two classes of particles is that auditorium. It was a moment of utter disbelief for Peter no 2 fermions can acquire the same quantum state but Higgs who did not believe that this discovery could be many Bosons can acquire the same quantum state. The possible in his life time. There was a standing ovation for Bosons are the particles that have integral spin like (0, 1, this great scientist and though he is a pretty introvert 2) and the Fermions are kind of a person, he could particles that have halfprevent tears rolling integral spin (1/2). The down his cheeks. I think Fermions are further we all can just imagine divided into two groups what kind of emotions of particles named the would have run through Leptons and the Quarks. his mind and if not then The table given below try imagining yourself completely lists down all putting a theory suppose the particles that the on dark matter which Standard Model now is the real quest of incorporates:modern day physics and the same thing that you One important theorised is observed concept onto which I say in 2060 when each would like to draw the one of us would have attention is to grown old and would be *Table depicting the 12 particles that constitute the leptons understand what is struggling to manage our meant by force carrier and the quarks which together are classified as Fermions. daily duties suddenly particles. The Standard receive a call which would say “Sir you were right, we Model says that force between two particles is caused due to exchange of particles which are termed as Gauge have found it”. This is what science is all about. It's about Bosons or simply Bosons. What happens is that when 2 what a human mind can achieve surpassing every particles interact or experience force among them they boundary and this is how we progress. exchange these virtual particles and thus momentum The news of the discovery of this elusive gets exchanged between them. This is how these particle took the whole world by storm and everyone particles experience force. The range of the force is who heard about this incident could not prevent inversely proportional to the mass of the carrier particle themselves from commenting over this particle. Some though not always (mass of the gluon, the force carrier thought that this was a major landmark; some said that for strong force, is zero but still the range is short due to this was a waste of time, money and energy. Some even some other reasons) . Take the example of the said that we have found GOD. But whatever was the case electromagnetic force in which the force carrier this was a pretty exciting time for the scientific particles are the Photons. All of us know that the rest community. I think now you would have got some desire mass of Photon is exactly zero, so the electromagnetic to know what this particle is all about and how this force is long range force. In a similar way the other 2 works. So from now on the rest of the article is going to forces the Strong and the weak force are carried by deal with the Standard Model, Higgs Mechanism and particles that are heavy, so they are called short range research implications though in a pretty simple text. forces. I am not talking about Gravitational Force here 3

the field and thus it is the most massive particle ever because it's not included in the Standard Model, but we all know that it is a long range force. observed (approximately 179 GeV/c2). These particles are mainly produced in the process known as Gluon Now come to the Fermions that are responsible for fusion, as in the LHC, where high energy proton beams constituting matter. These particles unlike bosons are of are collided with each half-integral spins like 1/2, other. The Higgs Boson 3/2 etc.

The basic thus produced has a mean constituents of the atom life time 10-22 seconds and it are the electron, proton decays into a set of lighter and the neutron. The particles. Using these decay electron is itself an processes the physicists elementary particle and are able to tell whether or thus has no substructure. It not the Higgs is produced falls into the class of or not. The probability that particles called the leptons. a collision will result in the T h e p ro to n s a n d t h e production of a Higgs neutrons on the other hand Boson is very low. are made up of particles that fall into the group of The main research particles called the quarks *This table is for the particles that act as force carriers. i m p l i c a t i o n s o f t h e Note Higgs boson has not been included as (named by Murray Gelldiscovery of Higgs particle Mann after the sound that it's not confirmed yet. Its properties will be dealt later. is that it will enable us to ducks produce). There are figure out what were the 6 quarks in total and they are called the up, down, top, properties of the universe just after the advent of it (one bottom, charm and strange. The protons are made of 2 of the possible theories for the creation of the universe is up quarks and 1 down quark. The up quark has a charge the Big Bang). This is because the energy and the length 2/3 whereas the down quark has a charge of -1/3. Thus scales involved during the collision are approximately the proton has a charge equal to one. The neutron on the the same as what is thought to be after the Big Bang. other hand is made of 1 up quark and 2 down quarks Moreover it will help the making it a neutral particle. scientists to move ahead The cartoon below shows which Besides these there are and tackle tougher Gauge Bosons are carriers of which forces. many other particles like problems like what Dark the neutrino which has got matter is and its properties. a very interesting story of Here I think it's good itself and it's pretty exciting to end the article but to read about them. before doing that I would Now come to the like to answer a question elusive one, the Higgs whether such kind of boson. As the name expensive experiments suggests it is a boson and should be performed? I thus has an integral spin. would like to answer to Actually it has a zero spin these people that whatever and zero charge. It's be the case it's far better to supposed to be the answer to the question as to how the spend on such research efforts where every nation elementary particles acquire mass. What happened was contribute in their own way which promotes harmony that when Standard Model was in its initial stages, the rather than spending billions and billions of dollar on mathematics forbidden the existence of particles that buying weapons to kill nations and ruin humanity. had mass which meant that something was wrong with Thank You ‌ the model. When the theory was applied to particles References: with mass it gave absurd results. So what the physicists 1. Wikipedia did was to introduce a concept known as the Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking which allowed the 2. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu particles to acquire mass and thus the model gave 3. Image credits:results that were meaningful. So to incorporate this http://www.cpepweb.org/cpep_sm_large.htm Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking these physicists l introduced the particle called the Higgs boson. Like every quantum field has a particle associated with, so Wikipedia the field that is associated with the Higgs boson is called About the Author the Higgs Field. It is the interaction with this field that Sumit Sinha (sumitsi@iitk.ac.in) is a third year gives particles their mass. Higher the interaction, higher undergraduate student in the Department of Physics, the mass is. Like we all know the photon has a rest mass IIT Kanpur. His research interests include particle of zero which means that it has no interaction with the physics and string theory.

Higgs field whereas the Top quark interacts heavily with 4

ARTICLE

Manish Kumar

Nuclear Forensics Have you ever wondered how nuclear engineering finds applications in the illicit trafficking of radioactive materials? How can we analyze the debris of a nuclear explosion to determine the origin of a nuclear material?

Or track in which country the weapon composition was mined, processed, or purified?

What is the age determination of a radioactive material?

How can we determine it?

I do not promise to give you the entire 'art' and 'science' of Nuclear Forensics in a single article. But, after reading this article, you will be able to answer most of the questions raised above.

Introduction Nuclear Forensics is the technical means by which nuclear materials are both characterized (according to composition, physical condition, age, provenance and history) and interpreted [1]. The goal of this field is to

Fig. Lead container found hidden inside the car [3].

determine various methods and techniques used for the production (or purification) of illicit radioactive material.

The following story may help you better understand this exciting field [2].

On May 29, 1999, Bulgarian Border Security arrested Urksan Hanifi for trying to enter Bulgaria from Turkey.

An inspection of Hanifi's car revealed a bill marked "99.99% Uranium-235 and a 2.5 kg metallic Pb container" [2]. The border security seized the Pb container (Fig. 1) hidden inside the air compressor in the trunk of the car. After interrogation, Hanifi revealed that he bought the uranium in Moldova and was intending to sell it to one of his clients in Turkey.

Bulgarian scientists began a forensic investigation of the sample. However, they were unable to identify the source of highly enriched uranium (HEU) [2]. The sample was transferred to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, California, USA for further investigation. After several experiments,

scientists discovered the sample contained not only HEU but also a glass ampoule, a Pb shield and yellow wax.

Forensic investigation of the sample at LLNL The investigation of any unknown nuclear material begins with its non-destructive analysis (NDA). The goal of NDA is to identify the constituents of the material so as to ensure that the material contains no surprises (in the form of any unknown radioactive release). Nondestructive analysis confirmed the sample did not

Fig. Interior of the container [3] (Image courtesy of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory). contain any hazardous substance. The analysis revealed that it did contain both HEU and some fission products* (Cs137 and Sb125).

The lead container was opened carefully. This container held a glass ampoule in the center surrounded by a piece of paper. This assembly was separated from shield by yellow wax (Figs. 2 and 3). The yellow wax was used to support the glass ampoule.

The ampoule was examined (with a stereomicroscope) to confirm the presence of HEU in the ampoule (Fig. 3).

The ampoule was opened to study the material further.

The compositions were as follows [2]: • Uranium oxide • Hydrated uranylfluoride • Some glass fragments These glass fragments were introduced when the ampoule was broken. Additional investigations included [2]: • Identifying very fine grains of HEU, indicating the sample was not manufactured using any conventional mechanical grinding and milling operation; • Detecting fission products, proving the material was derived from reactor-irradiated and processed uranium; • Confirming the age of the material as approximately 6.5 years (as on April, 2000). This observation was important to back-track the approximate date of final chemical processing of the uranium (October 1993 ± 1 5

Fig. Glass ampoule containing HEU (~ 7 cm in length) [2].

*For definitions of both fission and fission products, please read [4]. month); • Distinguishing visible marks on lead shield, as evidence of coarse hand filing. Marks from machine tools, such as lathe or an end mill (examined using optical and scanning electron microscopy) were absent; • Noting a lack of rectilinearity in the Pb shield, indicating that the container was casted in crude mold and shaped by hand; • Confirming the presence of Barium Chromate (BaCrO4) in yellow wax, proving that the wax was not manufactured in United States (because Cr is a carcinogen, use of BaCrO4 is banned in the US). This compound, however, is widely used in Brazil, China, India and some other European states.

• Identifying fibers within the paper. The trees used for making this paper are not found in United States though they are very common in Europe.

• Determining the absence of both bubbles and macroscopic flaws in the ampoule, proving that the work was performed by a highly skilled person.

Finally, the isotopic composition of Pb was inconsistent with Pb mined in the US. The signatures, however, were very similar to the ores found in both Asia and Europe [2].

The analysis of a nuclear material can therefore reveal its origin. The results indicate the material was not of US origin. This material was, most likely, produced (or processed) somewhere in Europe [2]. Scientists are still trying to refine their analysis.

The cost of 5-10grams of uranium oxide was estimated to be 10000 USD. After sometime, the judge charged Hanifi a few thousand dollars and released him.

Unfortunately, this was not the end of the story. Police discovered Hanifi's body in Moldova. Cause for Mr. Hanifi's death is still a mystery!

So, how can we determine the age of a radioactive material?

The age of a nuclear material is defined as the time elapsed since the material was last purified. This age is used • to track the history of a radioactive material; • in the detection of any undeclared nuclear activity; • to track the last legal owner (and smuggling route, if 6

possible).

Age is calculated from the radioactive decay of a sample.

The elemental ratios of both daughter nuclides and their parents are used in age determination.

For example, Shinonaga et al. [5] calculated the age of Pu particles by considering the decay of Pu241 into Am241.

The concept used was simple, Pu241decays (by βemission) into Am241 with a half-life of 14.29 years.

It is well known that the number of atoms of Pu241 at any time t can be expressed as#

where l is the decay constant of Pu andPu(0) is the number of atoms of Pu241at time t=0.

Also, the number of atoms of Am241 produced = initial amount of Pu241 – amount of Pu241 at time t, can be calculated with 241

#

For simplicity, we are denoting Pu241 by Pu and Am241 by Am. or, or,

The Am241/Pu241 ratio for age determination of the sample is measured by employing suitable techniques [5].

One can reasonably ask why we can neglect the decay of Am241 (to Np237). We can, because the half-life for this decay is 432.2 years and can thus be ignored for a quick calculation.

How is the debris of a nuclear explosion used to gain additional information?

The primary steps involved in analyzing the sample collected from debris of a nuclear explosion include the following.

STEP 1: Collecting the sample (debris). Following a nuclear explosion, the investigation team uses radiation survey meters to locate the radioactive evidences and clues. The workers involved in this survey are monitored frequently so as to ensure that the doses received by them are within the acceptable limit. The collected radioactive samples are transferred to the nuclear forensics laboratory for their analysis.

STEP 2: Determining the reactor type used for Pu production. Various plutonium isotopes are generated in nuclear reactors and the probability of each reaction is different. These probabilities vary with the energy of the neutron and some other parameters. Additionally, every reactor type has a different neutron energy spectrum. Hence, by determining the Pu isotopic

composition in the sample collected, the reactor type can be identified. Subsequently, we can determine where the Pu was produced [6].

STEP 3: Identifying the geographic origin of the sample by determining other elemental ratios. For example, in nature, oxygen consists of three stable isotopes: O16, O17, and O18. The isotopic ratio of O18 and O16 varies with the average annual temperature, the average distance from the ocean, and latitude [6].

Water is often used in the processing of uranium. Hence, the geographic origin of a sample can be approximated by the calculated isotopic ratio of O18 and O16.

STEP 4: Discovering more about the components used in the making of a nuclear device. For example, lead is commonly used in manufacturing of a bomb's housing. The isotopic composition of lead can reflect the possible mines used for its mining [7].

On the same side, various metals are traded internationally. Thus, we must be very careful in solving this puzzle [8, 9].

STEP 5: Reporting the results to higher authorities.

The results are communicated with confidentiality in the form of a technical report [10].

Highly radioactive environment following a nuclear blast makes the sample collection (and its analysis) a challenging task. The presence of agencies, such as FBI, and highly skilled people, is often required.

Nuclear Forensics, therefore, acts as an asset for national security by tracing the sources of smuggled nuclear material. The isotopic signatures of a radioactive sample act as 'fingerprints' of the reactor used for its production.

Nuclear Forensics can increase the chances of failure for terrorist activities. On the other side, it may convince them to buy the material from one country and use it in some other country. Further technological development in this aspect is still needed.

References [1] Nuclear Forensics, Role, State of the Art, and Program Needs, APS Physics and AAAS society. Online at https://seaborg.llnl.gov /docs/nuclearForensics_rolestateoftheart-programneeds.pdf (as of 8 May 2012).

[2] Kenton J. Moody, Ian D. Hutcheon, Patrick M. Grant, "Nuclear Forensic Analysis", Taylor & Francis Group, CRC-Press, New York (2005).

[3] Matthew B. Stannard, "Nuclear forensics touted as method to trace bomb materials, deterrent for rogue nations". Online athttp://www.sfgate.com/ (as of 8 May 2012).

[4] Manish Kumar, "Nuclear Energy: The Good, the Bad and the Facts", Notes on Engineering Research and Development, Vol.2 No.4, 5-9 (27 September 2010).

[5] T. Shinonaga, D. Donohue, A. Ciurapinski, D. Klose, "Age determination of single plutonium particles after chemical separation", Elsevier- Spectrochimica Act a Part B 64,95-98 (2009).

[6] Klaus Mayer, Maria Wallenius, Ian Ray, "Nuclear Forensics-a methodology providing clues on the origin of illicitly trafficked nuclear materials", The Royal Society of Chemistry, The Analyst, 130, 433-441, (2005).

[7] Andrew Moseman, "A Nuclear Bomb's Debris Could Reveal How It Was Made". Online at http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/ 80beats/2010/11/09/a-nuclear-bombs-debris-couldreveal-how-it-was-made/ (as of 8 May 2012).

[8] h t t p : / / b e l f e r c e n t e r. k s g . h a r v a r d . e d u / experts/929/tom_bielefeld.html(as of 19 June 2012).

[9] h t t p : / / w w w . h o m e l a n d s e c u r i t y n e w s wire.com/nuclear-bomb-forensics-will-identify-whoplanted-it(as of 19 June 2012).

[10] IAEA Reference Manual, "Nuclear Forensics support", IAEA Nuclear Security Series No. 2, Vienna (2006). Online at http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/ publications/ PDF/Pub1241_web.pdf (as of 19 June 2012).

[11] http://www.lordraj.com/2011/03/in-case-ofnuclear-emergency.html (as of 19 June 2012).

About the author Manish Kumar Sharma (mksrkf@mst.edu) is a PhD student at Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA. He is working with Dr. Ayodeji B. Alajo and Dr. Hyoung Koo Lee in the Department of Nuclear Engineering. His research interests include Radiation Detection and Image Reconstruction.

He did his M.Tech from IIT Kanpur under the supervision of Dr. Prabhat Munshi and Dr. M.S. Kalra.

This article is based upon the knowledge gained by him from a course of Radiochemistry by Dr. Carlos Castano.

The author is thankful to Ms. Elizabeth Roberson for technical editing of this article.

Image taken from: http://www.lordraj.com /2011 /03 /in-case-of-nuclear-emergency.html

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ARTICLE

Shantanu Misra

Do Role Models Influence the Moral Choices We Make?

Abstract The issue of social influence and its impact on us is of prime importance especially at the impressionable age of late-teenage and early-twenties. In a society like ours where the values of respecting our elders or seniors and hero-worshipping are a common phenomenon, young boys and girls straight out of schools suddenly get exposed to a myriad of influences from seniors, peers and professors. These influences may have an impact on the choices we make in situations of ethical dilemma.

The ethical choices we make as individuals may go a long way in shaping our lives. The article reports the findings of an experiment conducted to explore the impact of role models in determining our ethical decision-making. As far as our campus is concerned, it is easy to notice, especially at the under-graduate level, that the influence of role models (also known as social learning) is ubiquitous. The juniors look up to the seniors and tend to imbibe a lot from them.

Introduction This study was done under the requirement of a term paper in the course PSY454: Social Psychology in the even semester of the academic year 2009-10, taken by Dr. Kumar Ravi Priya. I arrived at the topic under study because I myself noticed a change in my judgment pattern after certain exposure to social learning. Civil disobedience is a term we generally relate to the preIndependence era and that is when it was glorified. But, when I read about Dhirubhai Ambani in the book, India Unbound by Gurcharan Das, and around the same time saw the movie, Guru which was purportedly based on Dhirubhai Ambani's life; I noticed in myself a certain respect for civil disobedience even in the present independent and democratic era. In fact, it opened in front of me a whole new paradigm of thought and probably affected the way I judged situations and people. This experience was the source of the experiment.

This topic has great significance for IIT Kanpur campus.

The student culture is such that we have a propensity to venerate our seniors and since we are at crossroads in our lives these social exposures can have a major impact on not only our careers, but on our personality as well.

In fact these social interactions do not include just seniors. Our peers, professors, movies, TV series and all other seemingly harmless stimuli can intentionally or unintentionally define our moral development and our code of ethics.

According to Albert Bandura, the process of observational social learning or modeling entails four conditions that are necessary before an individual can 8

successfully model the behavior of someone else (Ormrod, 1999): 1. Attention: the person must first pay attention to the model.

2. Retention: the observer must be able to remember the behaviour that has been observed.

3. Motor reproduction: the third condition is the ability to replicate the behaviour that the model has just demonstrated. This means that the observer has to be able to replicate the action, which could be a problem with a learner who is not ready developmentally to replicate the action. For example, little children have difficulty doing complex physical motion.

4. Motivation: the final necessary ingredient for modelling to occur is motivation; learners must want to demonstrate what they have learned.

We can invoke Bandura's theory to suggest that the presence of the afore-mentioned four conditions can lead to modeling even in addressing ethical dilemma.

This makes it important to look deeper into how our code of ethics evolves. Lawrence Kohlberg gave the concept of moral development using six stages that can be grouped into three levels of two stages each: preconventional, conventional and post-conventional (Colby and Kohlberg, 1987): 1. Pre-conventional: This level is commonly associated with children who judge the morality of an action by its direct consequences, i.e. avoidance of punishment and fulfillment of one's needs.

2. Conventional: This level is associated with adolescents and adults where the morality of actions is determined by society's views and expectations, driven by the desire to be accepted and to maintain law and order.

3. Post-conventional: In this level, people define their morality by their own abstract principles of right and wrong. Like pre-conventional, the self takes precedence before the society but the difference is that in postconventional, we recognize the need for rules; but rules become changeable mechanism and are no longer dictates that must be obeyed without reason.

Out of these 3 levels, we are concerned with the conventional level because it is in this level that most of us are presently in. It is in this level that we find our ethics being shaped by the social exposures that we go through because as mentioned above, social acceptance is the prime motivation behind our moral choices.

As an example, we in India place a lot of emphasis on the quality of respecting elders. If someone talks rudely to an elder person, he is looked upon with contempt and

we form an opinion about the person. Now, contrast this with, say, punctuality. The present culture or society of India does not place a high value on the quality of punctuality. So, if we encounter a case of someone being late, the judgment which we make about the incident or about the culprit is not that strong. So, the society around us dictates the importance we give to different social values.

The topic under study demanded that a psychological experiment be conducted. The aim was to introduce a new social learning and determine its impact on the ethical choices people make. In this experiment, social learning was introduced to address ethical dilemma in two different ways. In one condition, social learning aimed at inculcating in followers the choice of pursuing our dreams at the cost of compromising on certain rules (especially those which we believe can be done away with). In another condition, it aimed at adhering firmly to the rules even if that meant compromising a little on our goals.

Hypothesis To understand whether moral choices made by students were dependent on the received social learning, this study attempted to test the null hypothesis, "the moral choices made by the subjects are independent of the received social learning".

The chi-square test of independence was used to test the null hypothesis as the dependent or test variable (moral choice) was dichotomous in nature. The independent or group variable was the social learning that was given to the three groups. The analysis was done using significance level (?) of 0.01.

Planning the Experiment The experiment involved three groups of male students. Two groups were exposed to contrasting values through social learning. While in the first group or the Experimental Group I, the value that was glorified was that of "commitment towards one's goals even at the cost of bypassing norms". In the second group or the Experimental Group II, the value of "strict adherence to the laws at all costs" was emphasized. The third group was kept as the Control Group, that is, they were not given any exposure in social learning during the experiment.

The prominent challenges that I faced in planning the experiment were: 1. How should we design the initial learning such that the subjects accept our message?

2. How can we be sure that it is our variables which brought about the results?

3. How to ensure that the subjects don't suspect that they are a part of a psychological experiment?

4. How to obtain results objectively?

These challenges were addressed by planning each step of the experiment carefully. I decided to have a strength of around 10 for all the 3 groups. The actual

experiment was done on 11 students per group. The experiment was done on 1st year students of Hall 5 (Y9 batch). There was a reason for that. The social learning was given by me. I happen to be an ex-President of Hall 5 and the hostel culture, especially in Under-Graduate hostels in IIT Kanpur, happens to be such, that a President and especially, an ex-President is a highly revered figure in the hostel. Moreover, the subjects were told that they were being given an introduction talk about an organization which some alumni and present members of IIT Kanpur had set up. So these two aspects of information (talk being given by ex-President and organization of alumni) served as the role model in the experiment.

The talk was held in the conference room of Hall 5. The general body members of the hostel, especially the 1st year students, never get a chance to get inside the conference room (except during 'orientation', when they join as new students) and the choice of the venue meant that they were convinced that this was supposed to be something serious. During the supposed talk, refreshments were provided, contact information of the subjects was taken, and it was told to them that the introduction talk was being held in camera because this talk might be uploaded on the website of the organization. All these steps were taken to ensure that students find the set up credible and hence more readily imbibe the social variables that were introduced.

The Experimental Group I was told the said organization (called 'Students for Development') was trying to inculcate a new trend of reformist tendencies.

The organization questions the logic of having so many rules which slow down the work which one tries to do as the organization believes that there is nothing wrong in bypassing certain norms and laws if our intent is right.

The talk lasted for around 20 minutes.

The presentation to the Experimental Group II was held right after the first group activity. Therefore, there was no way that there could have been any communication between members of the two groups.

They were also told about the same organization but this time the ideology of the organization changed. The second group was told that this organization upheld the values of institutional discipline, of strict law-following.

After the experiment, the groups were made to fill up a questionnaire. The questionnaire (see Appendix) consisted of 5 situations in which there was an aforementioned conflict and in each case, two options were given; one highlighted conformity to rules while the other highlighted disobedient tendencies. The questionnaire was the mode of obtaining the data that was statistically analyzed.

A novel way of introducing the questionnaire into the experiment was designed. When I felt that I was in the latter half of my talks, I gave a missed call to my friend, who came into the conference room, as if he happened to come there by mistake. He asked me about what was going on, thus pretending that he had no idea 9

of what I was doing there. He then added that since I have assembled a few people, he might as well distribute among them a questionnaire, which he claimed were a part of his assignment. Thus, through this, we made an effort to ensure that the subjects were not aware that the questionnaire and the presentation given to them were linked to each other. Apart from the above two groups, I assembled eleven more first year students at one place and asked them to fill up the questionnaire without providing them with any social learning. They were the members of the Control Group in the experiment.

I wanted to further check whether the subjects had actually bought my story. So, later in the night, I sent

them a mail, asking them to fill up a form in case they are interested in being a part of that organization. 22 students were sent this mail (Group 1 and Group 2). Out of this, 11 people responded sharing their willingness to be a part of the organization. Thus it can be safely concluded that a considerable number of participants were influenced by the role models.

Analysis & Results The experiment had 11 subjects in each group. Each subject had 5 situations where he could have either followed the rules or acted at his own discretion. Hence, each group had 55 such situations. The frequencies of different choices made are given in Table 1.

Table1. Frequencies of Different Moral Choices Made by the Groups

The frequencies of moral choices corresponding to the groups were subjected to χ2 (Chi-Square) test of Independence to test the null hypothesis. The χ2 analysis was done with the help of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Table 2 shows that the χ2

value of 12.137 is significant at α = .001. Hence, the null hypothesis that 'the moral choices made by the subjects are independent of the received social learning' is rejected with the risk of false rejection (true hypothesis being rejected) having a probability of less than .001.

Table2. Results of Chi-Square Test of Independence

Table 3, which gives the values of standard residual of each cell, helps us in finding out the cell or cells of frequencies in Table 1 producing the statistically significant difference. For this, the standard residuals were compared with the critical value that corresponds

to significance level (α) of 0.05 (+/-1.96). It was found that the cell in Table 3 representing frequencies of moral choice as 'not following the rules' under Experimental Group II was statistically significant in producing the χ2 results.

Table3. Standardized Residual Values

Discussion and Implications The results of this experiment indicate that social learning plays a significant role in taking decision in situations of moral dilemma. Both the experimental groups to which social learning was given 10

seem to make their choices under the influence of these social exposures as is clear from the aforementioned results. Moreover, the results obtained for the Control Group is consonant with Kohlberg's predictions. We find that in the Control Group, there are relatively more

instances of following the rules which is what we expect in the conventional level of moral development.

However, as the results related to standardized residuals show, in case of Experimental Group II, a social learning that upholds 'not following the rules' was a strong reason for the overall impact of social learning on the subjects. This clearly indicates the influence of social learning over and above the life-stage dependent propensities to make moral choices.

The scope and implication of this finding is socially relevant. In the questionnaire, all situations are the ones which we generally face in our life (See Appendix for one such situation). The choices which we make in such circumstances showcase the principles we uphold in our lives and most importantly, these are the choices which can be of critical importance in determining the direction in which the individual leads its life and also the direction in which the society moves.

For the thought behind handling such conflicts is what separates one culture from the other. Now, that we can conclude that the choice which we make is not independent of the influences which we have due to social learning, we can as well conclude that the kind of learning that we give as a society to the future generations goes a long way in determining the future course of the society.

The fact that a minor social learning such as the one which the subjects were exposed during the course of this experiment can bring about such a marked difference in the choices we make can only make us wonder what are implications of the stereotypes introduced by the folk stories or by parents or by the media or by public figures.

This experiment was done on a bunch of IITians who are expected to be more inclined towards applying rational and independent yardsticks while making choices. But the experiment showed that they were affected by social learning while addressing a dilemma.

Scientific studies can be conducted to explore the less advantaged and more sensitive sections of the society to understand what models help them survive and grow during difficult circumstances.

If, through this experiment, I make people appreciate the fact that such learning, intentional or unintentional, does go a long way in determining the kind of life we lead; I would believe that the experiment has fulfilled its purpose. Perhaps, we may become more careful in choosing our role models. We may carefully examine the effects of individuals who are our current role models. Moreover, we may also start appreciating why someone like Mahatma Gandhi continues to be an inspirational role model for many human beings including Anna Hazare.

Limitations • One constraint that affected the conduction of the experiment was lack of sufficient time. It must be realized that the project was done as a part of a

psychology course. If given sufficient time, the experiment would have been conducted with considerably larger sample size in each of the three groups. Furthermore, some interviews would have provided insights into the phenomenon.

• Another limitation is that we cannot say in absolute terms that social learning took place in the case of all the 22 subjects involved. As mentioned above, we could be sure of only 11 subjects as they expressed willingness to join the hypothetical organization as an impact of social learning. Due to lack of time, I could not reach out to the other 11 subjects to know whether social learning had taken place in their case as well.

Acknowledgement I would like to thank Dr. Kumar Ravi Priya under whose guidance the project was done. It was his encouragement that ensured that the idea of this experiment which appeared naïve to me in the beginning could see the light of the day. I am also grateful to him for motivating me to share this study with the campus.

I would also like to appreciate my wing-mates, BV and Yogi for their help in getting the questionnaire filled up.

References • Ormrod, J.E. (1999). Human learning (3rd ed.).

Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

• Colby, Anne; Kohlberg, L. (1987). The Measurement of Moral Judgement Vol. 2: Standard Issue Scoring Manual. Cambridge University Press.

Appendix This is one of the questions given in the questionnaire: v You are a middle class family man who works hard at his job. You are getting late for your office. You like to be on time. No one forces you to be punctual but such is your respect for your job that you are never late. You are caught at a junction by the traffic police for not wearing a helmet and not possessing the registration papers of your vehicle. You generally possess both these things but today you were in haste. Ideally, the police should take hardly 2 minutes in finishing the formalities but they are deliberately taking time because they want a bribe. What would you do?

Give the bribe and reach office on time and do your § job.

Stick to the rules and be late for office. § About the Author Shantanu Misra (shantanumsr@gmail.com) is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur. He was a Dual degree student in the Department of Civil Engineering and graduated in 2012. His interests include dramatics, debating, movies, reading, psychology, image processing, map exploration etc.

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ARTICLE

“Virgin Births” – Dream or Reality?

On November 6, 1955, a story appeared on the front page of the Sunday Pictorial that was to double the newspaper's circulation in a single day.

Sporting the headline, "Doctors now say it doesn't always need a man to make a baby", the tabloid shouted that virgin births were no myth, and that there was a scientist who could prove it. The rare biological process which would enable this to happen

Image from http://marmorkrebs.blogspot.in/

was known as parthenogenesis, the paper informed its readers.

But the Pictorial's editors didn't stop there.

Halfway down the page appeared three words, in bold block capitals: "Find the Case". Sensationally, the paper was inviting women to come forward if they believed their daughters were the result of a virgin birth. If any woman's case was proved correct, by a panel of leading doctors, she and her daughter were set to make medical - indeed, human - history.

For the next year, the search for a virgin mother would grip the nation, and the world. The paper's circulation figures, meanwhile, grew to an unprecedented six million.

And the amazing fact was that there was a woman named Emmimarie from Germany, who was convinced that her 11 year old daughter Monica was the result of virgin birth. She could not believe her eyes when she read the article in Pictorial.

Nervously, she wrote to the newspaper in her halting English, describing the ten years she had been "wandering and worried about the birth of my daughter." "I honestly belief that she has no father," she said. "If you care to have all the facts please let me know."

The letter reached the desk of the geneticist 12

Helen Spurway, the woman who had first grabbed the tabloid's attention. She was involved in the case of Emmimarie and Monica. The blood serum test was successful and the next was skin grafting test.

Spurway proposed taking a piece of Monica's skin and grafting it onto Emmimarie's body. If it persisted indefinitely then it would be confirmed- that there was nothing in Monica's skin that was considered to be "alien" to Emmimarie's body. But unfortunately it failed.

Eight months after the search for a virgin mother had been announced; the Pictorial published a world exclusive on Emmimarie and her daughter.

The full details of their tests were also revealed in The Lancet, which published "Parthenogenesis in Human Beings" by Dr Stanley Balfour-Lynn of Queen Charlotte's Hospital in London. On the skin grafts, The Lancet concluded that they indicated that Monica's genes did not in fact match her mother's, despite all the previous evidence to the contrary. The study concluded that Emmimarie's claim that her daughter was fatherless must be taken seriously.

"Doctors have been unable to prove that any man took part in the creation of this child", screamed the Sunday Pictorial.

At that time it was really a 'dream' to become a 'reality'. But a research geneticist from Imperial College London, Aarathi Prasad, has tried to do the next best thing. Not only has she written a celebration of those eccentric creatures that are capable of reproducing by them without sexual contact, she controversially claims that sexless reproduction is the way of the future for humans, too.

Her book 'Like a Virgin' explores a fundamentally serious theme - We human beings are in control of our own destiny and there is nothing sacred or special about life itself. The main crux of Aarathi's story is that virgin births are now almost within the grasp of science.

Already, in Australia, they have pioneered an artificial womb - a plastic container specially designed to hold fluids and bacteria found in natural wombs.

Admittedly the creatures being developed in this artificial womb are grey nurse sharks - but, where sharks lead, humans could follow. Aarathi says it will one day be technically possible for a man to develop a child in one of these 'wombs' without the cooperation of any female partner.

Prasad's book also comes up with all kinds of freak case histories which appear to suggest that a

virgin birth might not be beyond the bounds of science as new techniques develop.

She warns that the Y chromosome- the strand of DNA which helps shape the male of any specie - is "hurtling down the evolutionary road towards extinction." Research has shown that the genetic information contained in it has been disintegrating over time.

And, if that is the case, if the Y chromosome is really dying out, then does this not mean that the human race itself is slowly dying out - unless scientists can devise artificial means for the human race to reproduce itself?

And is it not clear that, if this were to happen, the human race will opt for Prasad's idea of virgin birth?

Like so many scientists, Aarathi Prasad believes long-held taboos and traditions should be cast aside in the name of progress. She wants us to drop all our prejudices about sex, sexual difference, reproduction and foetuses, and to allow science to develop in any way it chooses. "Why can't a man be a mother?" she asks. "Why do we care so much about what it means to be a 'mother' rather than to be a 'parent'?"

By all reasonable estimates, in the near future we will conquer the tyranny of the womb. The question remains if we can also conquer the tyranny of human prejudice, too. Of course, she is being contentious so that her spirited book will sell. But Prasad is not a neutral research scientist: she is an out-

an-out liberal campaigner in favour of taking research on human embryology and fertilisation as far as it will go.

In her vision of the world, it is only fuddy-duddies who would question why anyone - elderly women, men, you name it - should not become pregnant if they choose to indulge the whim.

References: 1. "The woman who wants to abolish sex: Genetics expert urges us to embrace a future of virgin births (for women AND men) in which sex and marriage are redundant" by AN Wilson from dailymail.co.uk 2. "The modern-day virgin birth" by Aarthi Prasad from telegraph.co.uk 3. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/ article2190065/The-woman-wants-abolish-sex-Geneticsexpert-urges-embrace-future-virgin-births-womenAND-men-sex-marriage-redundant.html 4. h t t p : / / w w w. t e l e g r a p h . c o . u k / c u l t u r e / 9466588/The-modern-day-virgin-birth.html 5. h t t p : / / t i m e s o f i n d i a . i n d i a t i m e s . c o m /world/uk/Virgin-births-to-become-a-realitysoon/articleshow/15552687.cms 6. http://marmorkrebs.blogspot.in/ About The Author Priyankar Talukdar (talukdar@iitk.ac.in) is a first year M.Tech student in the Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Kanpur. His interests include playing cricket and reading novels.

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ARTICLE

Hitchhiking on the Edge of Thoughts Part Five: The Magnitude of the Problem “There's no such thing as no such thing.”

-Character Greed, Full Metal Alchemist (TV) By exploring the idea that the unknown has to be treated as the unknown, without assumptions, and also questioning whether physical and chemical processes alone are capable of being dealt with rationally, we have arrived at the heart of our discussion. We are faced with the task of not only defining our new basis, where we do not assume certain things out of hand, but also giving a way to successfully interact with the world, which can help us to understand it and hence, work with it.

To do that, we must first ask ourselves the question, what is it that made the physical sciences amenable to rational understanding? For, to be perfectly honest, there are a lot of experiences which have no outward relation to the natural sciences, such as ethics or art. What, in reality, separates the two? To that, the answer is easy to see, that as we deal with physical quantities, we are dealing with MAGNITUDES. And since we have developed a system of logical knowledge based on magnitudes, which is called mathematics, with that confidence we go ahead and classify all of the magnitudes, and also derive the properties therewith. At this point, it should also be noted that this is the origin of the coupling of mathematics with reality: we couple only those things that have specific magnitudes.

Let us take the elements of nature; from hydrogen to Element 117… they can all be quantified. All the properties of the world are seen as having a reality to the extent they can have a certain magnitude. As can the weights, the charges, or the strengths of magnets. That has given rise to the natural sciences of today. They can inform us very well as to the required material to build a sturdy bridge, or the required solids or gases to use to make a surgical laser. It provides us a means to quantify something, which is then put to use.

There are a lot of experiences that do not depend on magnitudes, but on quality. The dreams that we see every night, the Mona Lisa, the appreciation of music, the relishing of fantasies and mythologies, the emotions of daily life, the ethics of beings, the ideas of a purpose, or indeed, the very notion of an idea in itself, are those aspects of experience that cannot be quantified, as far as we know.

The next step that has been taken by the natural sciences is something subtle… since magnitudes were the section of experience that were available to be rationally understood and derived, and the other realms of experience did not submit themselves to that analysis as readily, it was assumed that all of the qualitative aspects of experience are "nothing but" a derivation from the quantities that have magnitude. The question was not pursued, as to whether there is a way of rationally dealing

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with concepts that, by their very nature, are not quantitative, or mathematical. To be honest, even when we say we hold that mathematical knowledge is true, that itself is a concept, an idea, a thought that can never be quantified, but is held as true nevertheless.

This is similar to the proverbial story of the man looking for his lost key under the streetlight. When asked where and when he lost it, he pointed yonder to the darkness and said it was there. But when questioned why he did not look for it over there, he irritably responds: "You fool, how could I search for it where there is no light to see it with?" Our status is somewhat similar. When we look at the unknown (darkness), which are all our questions regarding our perceptions, we continuously look via the methods which determine magnitudes, in the sincere hope that because these things are understood (or should we say, illuminated), we would find the answer somewhere in that area itself.

Why have we walked down that path? It is simply because magnitude, as such, is seen to be independent of personal involvement. A 5 kg mass is seen as a 5 kg mass, regardless of who weighs it. Valuing that which is independent of personal prejudice, or is eternal, or that which does not change from being to being, situation to situation… no matter how clichéd it may sound, that indeed can be seen as the primary source for the entire superstructure of scientific advancement that has been set up.

So, does that mean that qualities are excluded from having any permanence, or truth to them, because they cannot be quantified? Not necessarily, it only means that we must seek their permanence, or essence, in their quality itself, and not in terms of quantity. Every experiment that has been done within any lab or without, as far as the natural sciences go, has to do with creating situations which affect the quantities of things, which are then subject to understanding.

Let us say a person decides to scientifically examine the response of people to a particular piece of poetry. He would try to obtain a large number of measurements, which are called parameters, and hoping to keep all of them except one, constant, he hopes to derive out the relevant criteria.

About the Author V. Gopi Krishna (vgopik@gmail.com) graduated from IIT Kanpur in 2009 and he is currently pursuing his doctoral studies at the University of Houston. This article is the fifth part of the series of 7 articles the author, Gopi Krishna, has written for NERD; on the topics related to philosophy of science and society. Reach out for next issues of NERD to read the following articles of the series.

ARTICLE

Flapping MAV Birds' flights have fascinated humans since times immemorial. People have developed many flapping mechanisms and ornithopters to imitate the flight of these natural aviators.

In recent years, people have shown great interests in MAVs (Micro Aerial Vehicles) for various practical applications. Agility is one of the most desired characteristics from such MAVs. As fixed-wing aerodynamics are inefficient at low speeds of MAV regime, flapping wings serve as important substitutes in such cases.

However, conventional ornithopter designs and flapping mechanisms using gear/crank systems are not suitable for MAVs as they add to weight, power requirements and are more prone to structural damages. So there's a need for 'smart' materials and 'smarter' mechanisms.

Piezoelectric materials are one class of such smart materials which find a lot of applications in aerospace.

Besides, we need to focus on light weight materials, composites and polymers to be used in manufacturing.

Our project (on which this article is based) focuses on development of a bio-mimetic design of Hummingbird like wing for flapping MAV. The reason for choosing Hummingbird is its agility and its flight c h a ra c t e r i s t i c s w h i c h a re intermediate between large birds and small insects. Bio-mimetic models are targeted to achieve efficiencies of natural prototypes.

Motion and shape control of the developed wing, and use of piezoelectric materials as sensors and as actuators for flapping are also parts of the research project.

In the upcoming parts of the article, I briefly discuss about conventional technologies and materials for flapping MAVs. I would also like to discuss the work done during summers and important results observed.

Basic piezoelectricity Piezoelectricity refers to the phenomenon of generation of electricity from mechanical stress (direct effect generation mode) and vice versa (converse effect motor mode). Piezoelectricity is seen in crystals due to lack of symmetry which results in polarization due to mechanical stress and vice versa. Rochelle salt, quartz et cetera are some of the common naturally occurring

Prasoon Suchandra

piezoelectric materials. Poling is the process of producing polarization by exposing the material to strong electric field and then removing it. [1], [2].

Polyvinylidene fluoride - PVDF PVDF is a fluoro polymer. It exists mainly in four crystalline phases - alpha, beta, gamma and delta, of which beta phase is the most piezoelectric due to trans configuration (see figure below). Due to its light weight, considerable strength and of course, piezoelectricity, it's widely used for aerospace applications. [3], [(Image below) - 4].

A PVDF sensor is developed by Ms. Sampada Bodkhe (MTech student) as part of this research and it was tested by mounting on a cantilever beam and vibrating using electromagnetic shaker. Acceleration data were also collected using Laser displacement sensor. The collected data fairly matched with data from PVDF sensor. [10], [(Image below) – 10].

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Basic signal and image processing Signal and image processing is used for stress-strain analysis. For example: We have an image patterned over some surface. Now this surface is exposed to in-plane stresses and the image gets deformed. Now by relating the deformed image with the original (using change in distance between pixels etc.), stains can be calculated.

Shape control using piezoelectric actuators A desired shape in a cantilever beam can be achieved using certain number One important aspect in flapping is generation of thrust due to flapping, of piezoelectric actuators (of certain referred to as Knoller-Betz effect (Knoller, 1909; Betz, 1912). [5]. characteristics) placed at specific locations on the beam. The shape control methodology between shoulder and elbow. [8]. which we plan to use is about optimization of positions Designs and motion simulations and voltages applied across given number of specific The immediate aim of the project was to replicate piezoelectric actuators, for a particular beam. [7].

Hummingbird's forelimb skeleton for our flapping wing.

Though conventional shape control methods are for Such a bio-inspired wing framework would ensure static deflections, they can be extended for dynamic stiffness, strengths and other properties similar to shape control where we need to achieve desired modal natural prototypes. For example, when Hummingbird shapes. hovers at a place, its wing-tip moves in a 'figure of eight' Hummingbird's forelimb shape. What we believe is that bio-mimetic models Hummingbird's forelimb has a lot of special would passively allow deflections to achieve such characteristics which make this bird so agile. The shapes. This was also observed in an MAV called “Golden relative size of parts of bones between shoulder and Snitch� developed at Tamkang University, Taiwan. [5]. wrist are much smaller than other larger birds. Wing In flowing sections, we discuss about some of the can be rotated in all directions at shoulder but only little skeleton models we developed for the wing of our future motions are allowed at elbow, wrist and other joints. flapping MAV. All these designs were developed in These characteristics give sufficient stiffness to wing SolidWorks 2011 (a 3-D CAD software) and rigid body and allow high flapping frequencies. The main motions of some of these designs were also simulated in contribution towards flapping is of rotation of part the same software.

This was our first design and was closest to the actual bone design as it consisted of maximum number of individual parts (five) and allowed maximum degrees of freedom. To consolidate the whole structure, we needed to use adhesives at joints. Motion simulation and control was difficult, in addition to structural integration. So we discarded this model.

Design 1 In this design, all the five parts of forelimb were fused in a single part.

Besides, a socket design was developed for shoulder. Flapping was simulated by rotation of part between shoulder and elbow. To make the whole motion more realistic, the socket was also given rotational as well as linear oscillations (see above figure). For passive deflections, joints in forelimb and at Design 2 socket were necked.

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This design was very much similar to design 3. The main difference is employment of a ball and socket joint at wrist to allow for more motion at this joint. The design was not fabricated.

Design 3

MAVs using piezoelectric transducers Many MAVs using piezoelectric transducers have been developed in different parts of the world. Some of them just use piezoelectric sensors for dynamic studies whereas some use piezoelectrics to actuate flapping.

Researchers at Harvard have developed a Microrobotic fly (mass 60 mg) whose wings flap by piezoelectric actuators.

[5], [6], [9].

Design 4

This design was double the actual size.

Necked joints were avoided. Parts were designed taking care of limitations in rapid prototyping facilities. The socket was partially cut to make socket and ball parts detachable and re-attachable.

Motion simulations were similar to design 2. This design was fabricated in 4i lab. And it is this design which is to be integrated with wing designs developed by people already working on this project (see the figure below).

Integration with wing People in this research have developed wing models for flapping – mainly from epoxy-carbon fibre and epoxy-carbon nanotubes (CNT) composites. Material choices were based on stiffness and strength required, light weight and durability, among several other factors.

People have tested these wings and found that epoxy-CNT wings show better properties.

The next phase of the research consists of integration of bone structures developed with wing designs. Our design 4 was combined with the wing design and their rigid body motion was simulated in SolidWorks (see figures above and below).

The size is double the actual size of natural prototype.

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The combined bone-wing model was processed for meshing and modal analysis in Ansys Fluent software, by Mr. David Kumar (PhD Research scholar).

18

There was an important observation. There

indicating greater increase in stiffness (k) than

was a significant increase in natural frequency,

mass (m) (frequency ~

Future work The next phase of research consists of physical integration of the bone and wing designs. This would be done by moulding and casting, keeping the bone design at appropriate position.

Once the complete wing is fabricated, we need to test its properties dynamically. Piezoelectric sensors could be employed to obtain data.

For the final MAV, we also need to develop an actuation mechanism for flapping using piezoelectrics. [9].

Acknowledgements I am very grateful to my mentor, Professor Dr. Sudhir Kamle, for providing me such an interesting topic to work upon and guiding me on the same. I am also thankful to my seniors David Kumar, Rajesh, Sampada and Aakash Sharma who were very helpful during the project.

References [1] Basic Piezoelectricity, by John Potter Shields, 1966.

[2] ANSI/IEEE Std 180-1986.

[3] Piezoelectricity in polyvinylidenefluoride, by G.M. Sessler, Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, West Germany, September 1981.

[4] Modeling piezoelectric PVDF sheets with conductive polymer electrodes, by Laura Marie Lediaev, April 2006.

[5] Flapping wing with micro sensors and flexible framework to modify the aerodynamic forces of a Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV), by Lung-Jieh Yang, Tamkang University, Taiwan, 2007-2009.

[6] Challenges for 100 Milligram Flapping flight, by Robert J. Wood and Ronald S. Fearing, 2011.

[7] Shape control of a beam using piezoelectric actuators, by Brij N Agrawal and Kirk E Treanor, March 1999. [ 8 ] h t t p : / / d e s i g n . a e . u t exa s . e d u / h u m m _ m av /theory.html .

[9] Design of Flapping wing mechanisms, by Rohan Tariq, National University of Singapore, 2010.

[10] Material development for a dragonfly inspired composite wing and PVDF sensor, by Sampada Bodkhe, IIT Kanpur, May 2012.

About the Author Prasoon Suchandra (sprasoon@iitk.ac.in) is a third year undergraduate in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, IIT Kanpur.

The above excerpts having been taken from Project report titled "Motion control in Hummingbird like flapping MAV using piezoelectric applications" submitted by the author under SURGE 2012 program (Summer undergraduate Research Grant for Excellence), IIT Kanpur.

INTERVIEW

Desi Smart Grids Interview with V S K Murthy Balijepalli Profile: V S K Murthy Balijepalli Research Scholar Department of Electrical Engineering IIT Bombay Achievements: MIT Young Indian Innovator (tr35) Department of Science and Technology (DST) Lockheed Martin Gold Medallist (Smart Grids) Gandhian Technology Edge Awardee, SRISTI, NIF Contacts: • Tel: +91 8976982581, +91 22 2576 4424 • Web: http://www.ee.iitb.ac.in/student/~vsk/ Details: • Age : 26 • Educational qualification: B.Tech+PhD • Current occupation: Research Scholar, IIT Bombay; Founder of DesiSmartGrid.com • Invention: KM-technology (for electricity parameter forecasting and improving the performance of the existing forecasting tools) + Smart Grid innovative applications (www.gridfortune.com/app) • Year of invention: 2010-12 • Nature of innovation: Energy Sector • Use: Useful for all the players in the energy supply chain, which includes end-consumers, power distribution operators, Market participants, Transmission operator, generators, and system operators.

• When was it patented: 2011 + few other patents under patent filing process Following are the excerpts from our online interview with Mr. Balijepalli.

NERD How will Smart Grid, your invention, bring about a change in the society?

MR. BALIJEPALLI Smart Grid is a new research area; it is all about exploring the ways for modernizing the existing power grid and empowering the endconsumers (house-hold, industry, commercial et cetera) to participate into the power grid activities. I have also authored a publication on the Indian smart grid, and it is the first international publication. For educating the Indian audience on the smart grids, I have also started an educational portal, which is www.desismartgrid.com.

NERD How does your invention work?

MR. BALIJEPALLI One of the most important technical

tools involved in Smart Grid is that of forecasting of electricity parameters- electricity price, grid frequency and load. It empowers the consumers to actively participate in the power demand-supply flow.

Forecasting electricity parameters can facilitate consumers' participation in balancing the power demand-supply ratio. My patented forecasting technology, which is km-technology (km-tech), uses golden search interpolation techniques, Fibonacci functions, robust regression algorithms and novel advanced neural networks to give accurate forecast of electricity price, effective load, wind energy and grid frequency.

NERD Is this the only such research or invention?

MR. BALIJEPALLI Yes. NERD Tell us a bit about Smart Grid technologies. When did you start? What does it do?

MR. BALIJEPALLI I started my research in 2008. During that time, no one was doing the research on the Smart Grids in India. Even when I stated the concept of Smart Grid to my PhD thesis advisor - he felt that it was weird and questioned its functionality. When slowly people began acknowledging the need for a smarter power grid, I received a tremendous support from my thesis advisor.

NERD Concerning the financial aspect, was Smart Grid started with your own investments? How much seed capital did you put in?

MR. BALIJEPALLI I started the smart grid educational portals and others such efforts with the help of money I received from one of my patent commercialization processes. After winning the Department of Science and Technology (DST) - Lockheed Martin gold medal, both FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) and DST have come forward to provide financial support for my initiatives depending on the business plan.

NERD What other services/inventions are you engaged in?

MR. BALIJEPALLI Desi Smart Grid, Grid Fortune, and also in smart grid activities.

NERD What is your next plan of action?

MR. BALIJEPALLI To focus more on promoting smart grid education in India through desismartgrid.com and join any IIT as a faculty to continue my research on the smart grid!

NERD What did you aspire to become?

MR. BALIJEPALLI Speaking on a short-term basis, I would like to become a professor at IIT. In the long term, I hope to become a member of Rajya Sabha.

Thank you so much for your valuable time!

19

ARTICLE

Can I Borrow Your Heart for Few Days ???

A Science fiction by A Ravi Kant

“No, no it's not possible.”

“Doctor?”

“Rajesh, you may well take a sip of water now.”

“Why Doctor?”

“Nothing, just a small glitch in your biological system that didn't exist in your previous visit”, replies the Doctor. Dr. Raku, a very well known Cardiologist of 2030s and one of rare people, has successfully carried out 188 total artificial heart (TAH) implants but is still struggling to make his impact and create history in medicine. Everything heard about him is good except one thing.

“Doctor?”

“Okay, now you see this, myograms of your auricles and ventricles look no good. Look here, the right auricle is lifeless, that ventricle is not seemingly motionless and this auricle is working independently. I hope you understand.”

Sales manager by profession, Rajesh can hardly absorb any of Dr. Raku's words and now he appears more terrified than before with Parkinson's tenor.

“I hope you understand Rajesh, this is not looking good dear. You heart is not able to pump enough blood, and your heat has become weak and will only get worse.”

No, it doesn't sound like being terrified or horrified and maybe he appears motionless at the moment just because the ill-hearten genius has sickened the poor fellow to count his days. “How long will I survive Doctor?”

“Based on the elastography of your heart, it appears like the muscles will get weaken by 50% in 3 months and this is when you would depart.”

There is a moment of melancholy in the air and acute depression of the spirit as he now realizes that his heart can bear no more effort and is almost dead and cannot survive any longer. “Nurse, can you give me some tissue paper?”

“Yes”, replies the Nurse.

“Listen this Rajesh, do you know any donor?”

“No Doctor, I have no idea.”

“Well, why I am telling you these is because you need some donor who can lend you a heart.”

“Yes my grandmother, please get her for me.”

“How? Will she be ready to willingly donate her heart for you?”

“I wonder she won't. That lady is very mean. Can't afford to take a penny out of her pocket to buy something for me; how could I imagine of it.” Suddenly some more ideas popped up in his head, “No, may be someone else would be ready. Doctor, what about ICUs, Indian heart association, nonagenarians, culprits? Someone would be lying out there, right? Or someone about to die.”

“Stupid.”

20

He has nothing but to say in distress, “Madam Meera, can I borrow your heart for a few days?”

“Not possible Sir”, replies the Nurse with a smile.

Situation doesn't seem to be good as it's already late now. The blood pressure has risen so high that Rajesh can feel those vibrations of his heart as if he were to depart now. With Raku's injection he falls asleep.

Murmuring on the corners, Raku enjoys his excitement over his new implantee, “Patient number 189, 189th entry, my operation number 189; only 11, 11 more to go, and then I will become greatest of the great and will make history. People will remember me, my name.”

Unable to tolerate any more delay he says, “Sister, prepare the subject number 189 for surgery.”

“Yes Sir.” When Rajesh comes to consciousness he finds himself wrapped up in plastic and could only find speckles as his vision is not yet fully recovered. One big Raku and one cylindrical machine and his excitement, and a very annoying sound is hovering all over his body.

Weak heart does perceive only little things, “Doctor, what is happening?”

“Don't speak.”

After a long time, Dr. Raku is ready to start working on the real thing. “Now may now speak at your own risk.”

He needs someone who can let him know what's going on as he is under deep trouble of losing his life. “You seem to be somewhat kind-hearted, Meera. Would you let me a favour of telling me about the things that are going on in my thorax?”

“Sure Sir, we have broken up your bones and entered into your heart without any problem. We are on our way to take out your heart gradually and replace it with a bionic heart.”

“How long will the process take?”

“Oh it's just a matter of 1-2 hours.”

“May you please tell me something about this so called heart, sister?”

“Sure Sir, this is a life saving device which we implant when the patient is unable to pump their blood normally due to biventricular heart failure.”

“At least you sound comfortable at this stage Meera, please tell me more.”

“Thank you Sir. When someone looses a part of their body we replace them with bionic counterparts, like we have bionic heart, bionic ear, bionic hands, bionic eye and many more, Sir. This is a broad area of research and we call it Medical bionics.”

“No, I am interested in heart please.”

“Well Sir, the story of bionic heart started off in 1980s.

The 1st permanently implantable artificial heart was invented by Robert Koffler Jarvik. Though many artificial hearts have been developed by other scientists, the Jarvik-7 was best during those times. It consists of a

set of air hoses that connect to heart from a pneumatically controlled pump which is driven by an external console. Dr. Barney Clark was the first person to get the implant in 1982 who suffered from congestive heart failure. The patient's condition got bad with the infection and could survive for 112 days. Subsequent recipients also suffered from infections in their final days and there were cases where the patients have survived up to 18 months.”

“Okay.”

“And later came the Abiocor which is another series of bionic heart that employs hydraulic system driven by motor for pumping the blood. They consist of internal lithium based batteries which allow the patients to do activities like taking shower or others for about half an hour. Most of the times they have to use external battery pack. And later came Abiocor-3 and others” “How long did they survive with Abiocor?”

“They say one of the patients survived for 512 days and died due to damage in the internal membrane of the Abiocor. But after all it is a life saving device which would give you plenty of days to live.”

“Would I be able to walk?”

“Yes of course. You can live like a normal being and there is no need to stick with the batteries anymore. You see a lot of changes in technology which allow further modifications of critical components like TET, onboard batteries, motors, sensor systems and others. With the miniaturized transcutaneous energy transmission systems we can now have total implants where we can supply the energy via induction mechanism to a secondary coil lying beneath the skin without compromising for the patient's comfort. But you would rarely use TET for recharging your batteries as you need to do so only once a year. You would have high density batteries to live for many months and so you can go around and walk like a normal human being.”

“What about the infection?”

“Yes, in earlier days it was found to be a major cause of the complications and was then later improved with bioengineered designs which I do not know. They say that such provisions have lead to absolute compatibility with the body.”

Crazy old man kept murmuring intermittently that sounds, “189 189 189 and yes, new one and good one and 11 to go.” After a long 2 hours of surgery the Doctor takes a deep breath. “At last you have got your new 'heart but heartless'.”

“Sir, I didn't get you.”

“Oh I said, be happy and enjoy.”

Spontaneously it strikes his brain of his attitude very clearly. A person of very weird character; filled with bursts of excitements and thunders; doesn't make such a compliment and shows no remorse. He knew that he won't get direct answers but after all he cannot sit quiet from asking one last thing, “How long will I live, Sir?” “Well, pray the god.”

It's a general belief or just a statement that they say, bad omen surrounds this place. They say, the spirit of a heartless patient who passed away a century ago is still surviving somewhere very close by. They say, it can be

only heard by its prey. They say, it likes people with weak mind-set and if spotted, will drain off its entire energy on gradual basis and then engulfs him one fine midnight.

He heard watchmen saying these to a couple of his friends in secrecy.

“No, it's not like that; rather it's the way of Doctor's treatment.” It's confusing for a while but it's a great sigh of relief for Rajesh to find himself alive. Those are just nonsense and are just popped up stories of demons to lure the audience. Humans have gone far ahead in technology and we have now the solution for everything we can make, what we want and many more.

But soon he recollects the Doctor saying about the 'heart w i t h h e a r t l e s s ' wh i c h d rove h i m to t h i n k philosophically, “Who am I? A Cyborg or a Human or somewhere in between. I don't know, but for sure I am now one among the 12000 unclassified species. My biological heart being replaced by a machine would make me different? That means no human beats and no lub-dub sounds and ECG is crap. No, things are not clear yet. Human heart also symbolizes spirituality, love, emotions and morals, right? Machine has none of these components. No, emotions flow from brain, right?”

Entangled over philosophical contents of human heart, he tries to adjust himself to fit in his philosophical idea that emotions indeed come from brain rather than heart so that he can presume that he is not a Cyborg for sure.

For him it's difficult to settle this way. He hopes Meera might be of great help, “Meera, for long I had been thinking that I had been given ill treatment by this Doctor. Right from the beginning he doesn't seem friendly to me. I mean, does he ever have some kind of softness in heart?”

She comes close by and speaks into his ears, “He is a Cyborg”.

The above figure illustrates various components of Abiocor; for example, TET, onboard electronics, batteries and pump which help to carry out the physiological functions of a heart.

Ref: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/healthtopics/images/abiocor_tah.jpg About the Author A Ravi Kant (ravikant@iitk.ac.in) is a graduate student in the Department of Biological Sciences & Bioengineering.

21

ARTICLE

Human Genome Unveiled

Anmol Awasthi

genome sequencing facility, to determine the sequence Can you think of the most esoteric scientific of the human genome over a 3-year period was made. accomplishment in the history of all scientific discoveries that fall within the range of your memory?

The pioneer or the protagonist of the whole movement Actually, my question falls largely into the category of was a man called John Craig Venter and without whose vague and intangible inquiries, because modern science endeavour, HG project would have been a dream for the is something which is bearing modification with every future years of scientific innovation to come. He played a wink of our eye. But on a broader level or say pivotal role in catalyzing the HGP from a slow more generally, my question does deserve an pace of progress to complete achievement of answer. And the answer is, the colossal its goal of sequencing the human genome.

Human Genome Project (HGP). Genome, in To begin the technical nuts and bolts, I would simple words, is the entirety of an organism's start with Venter himself. Venter was hereditary information. passionate about the power of genomics to The incentive to carry out a research study radically transform healthcare. Venter on the above project came from my faculty believed that shotgun sequencing was the guide, Dr. Pradeep Sinha of the Biological fastest and most effective way to get useful Sciences and Bio-Engineering (BSBE) human genome data. The method was department, who enumerated the details controversial, however, since some and benefits of performing a thorough geneticists felt it would not be accurate, John Craig Venter investigation of the Human Genome Project. enough for a genome as complicated as that The Pioneer of This goaded me to take up this project as my Human Genome Project of humans. Frustrated with what Venter arena of study and observation viewed as the slow pace of during the summers. But being a progress in the Human Genome first year student, my project, and unable to get funds knowledge and abilities for his ideas, he sought funding permitted me only a theoretical from the private sector to fund understanding of the genome Celera Genomics. The goal of project. My project thus does the company was to sequence not involve any experimental or the entire human genome and practical design and may well be release it into the public domain termed as a 'reading project'. for non-commercial use in much Decoding of the DNA that less time and for much less cost than the public HGP. The constitutes the human genome company planned to monetize has been widely anticipated for their work by creating a value-added database of the contribution it will make toward understanding genomic data to which users could subscribe for a fee. human evolution, the causation of disease, and the The goal consequently put pressure on the public interplay between the environment and heredity in genome program and spurred several groups to defining the human condition. The Human Genome redouble their efforts to produce the full sequence. DNA Project was a whooping step in the effort to understand from five demographically different individuals was the complexities behind DNA by sequencing the entire used by Celera to generate the sequence of the human human genome and analyzing the sequencing so genome; one of the individuals was Venter himself. In obtained to read an individual's profile. My article is 2000, Venter and Francis Collins of the National dedicated to understanding of how the HG project Institute of Health and U.S. Public Genome Project accomplished this task and what were the implications of DNA sequencing for the individual and jointly made the announcement of the mapping of the HG, a full three years ahead of the expected end of the society at large.

Public Genome Program. The announcement was made A project with the goal of determining the complete along with U.S. President Bill Clinton, and UK Prime nucleotide sequence was first formally proposed in Minister Tony Blair. Celera published the first HG in the 1985. In subsequent years, the idea met with mixed journal Science, and was soon followed by a publication reactions in the scientific community. However in in Nature . Despite some claims that shotgun 1990, the HG project was officially initiated in the sequencing was in some ways less accurate than the United States under the direction of the National clone-by-clone method chosen by the HGP, the Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Department technique became widely accepted by the scientific of Energy (DOE) with a 15-year, $3 billion plan for community and is still the de facto standard used today. completing the genome sequence. In 1998, A 2.91-billion base pair (bp) consensus sequence of the announcement of the intention to build a unique 22

the very bridle of the modern science euchromatic portion of the human and technology. It contains a message genome was generated by the widethat is certain to have a profuse and genome shotgun sequencing method. long-lasting effect on the modern The 14.8-billion bp DNA sequence was individual, society, nation and the world generated over 9 months from at large.

27,271,853 high-quality sequence reads (5.11-fold coverage of the In the avant-garde era of rapid genome) from both ends of plasmid development in almost every sphere of clones made from the DNA of five human activity, morals, principles, rules individuals. Two assembly strategies-a and regulations have been forced to whole-genome assembly and a regional stand aside. One of the very basic codes chromosome assembly-were used, of conduct violated with impunity is Process of each combining sequence from Celera that of equality. Our scientific and DNA sequencing and the publicly funded genome effort. technological development has taken The public data were shredded into society much ahead on the so-called 550-bp segments to create a 2.9-fold coverage of those 'path of progress' but has resulted in construction of genome regions that had been sequenced, without huge and long-distance boundaries between the rich including biases inherent in the cloning and assembly and the poor, the fair and the swarthy, the educated and procedure used by the publicly funded group. The two the uneducated, different religious and cultural assembly strategies yielded very similar results that practices, different classes of employment and so on-the largely agree with independent mapping data. list is endless. That is to say, social, cultural, ethical and educational differences have anchored themselves so Analysis of the genome sequence revealed 26,588 deeply in our society that now it is no less than a protein-encoding transcripts for which there was Herculean task to eliminate them. strong corroborating evidence and an additional ~12,000 computationally derived genes with mouse Through the HGP, we understand that even nature is at matches or other weak supporting evidence. DNA its best in trying to establish equality among all sequence comparisons between the consensus individuals. The scientific clause “…any two sequence and publicly funded genome data provided individuals are more than 99.9% identical in locations of 2.1 million single-nucleotide sequence…” is metaphorical to the literary saying “All polymorphisms (SNPs). A random pair of human human beings are equal.” This project accentuates the haploid genomes differed at the rate of 1 bp per 1250 on trait of equality which runs throughout all human average, but there was marked heterogeneity in the beings. level of polymorphism across the genome. Less than 1% If we glance at the human history, much before this HGP of all SNPs resulted in variation in proteins, but the task had even been born in human mind, we find that of determining which SNPs have functional eminent personalities like M K Gandhi, Dr. B.R. consequences remains an open challenge.

Ambedkar, Vinoba Bhave, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, A major surprise found after sequencing and Abraham Lincoln etc. dedicated their lives to remove assembling ~95% of the euchromatic sequence of the disparity between different classes of society.

Homo sapiens was that far fewer genes (26,000 to Incontrovertibly, they were oblivious about the 38,000) were found than the earlier molecular technicality that was backing their efforts. To them, predictions (50,000 to over 140,000). This is clarified by humanity was the only stimulus that urged them into the fact that the modest number of human genes means their course of action. that something else must be looked for the mechanisms Even if we peep into the modern community, we find that generate the complexities inherent in human tremendous such crusaders for equity. The exemplary development and the sophisticated signalling systems example of Narayan Murthy, one of India's most that maintain homeostasis. There are a large number of influential advocates for health care and rural ways in which the functions of individual genes and development, is sufficient to show that there is no gene products are regulated. This dynamic system of dearth of leaders who want the standards of all classes ours has many ways to modulate activity, which to come closer to one another. Another example is of Dr. suggests that definition of complex systems by analysis D.P. Shetty , a renowned cardiac surgeon from of single genes is unlikely to be entirely successful.

Karnataka in India, who single-handedly brought down The most striking and conspicuous result however, the cost of many complicated heart surgeries, bringing relates to the variation between two human individuals. them within the reach of many people. The Aravind Eye Many diverse sources of data have shown that any two Hospital, which has grown into a network of eye individuals are more than 99.9% identical in sequence, hospitals that have seen a total of nearly 32 million which means that all the glorious differences among patients in 36 years and performed nearly 4 million eye individuals in our species that can be attributed to genes surgeries, majority of them being cheap or free, is a true falls in a mere 0.1% of the sequence. role model in the contemporary society and has been applauded all over the world. The Human Genome The last statement, though said simply, and may sound Project of Venter simply reinforces the idea that all these simple too, but at a deeper level, it has the might to shake 23

institutions and the individuals behind them were trying to implement, not always being consciously directed by the technical counterpart.

The Human Genome Project also holds many other promising future deals. 'Personalized Genome', for example is a concept which has been maximally motivated by the DNA sequencing process carried out in the Genome Project. It allows the creation of every individual's specific profile depending upon his distinct genome and hence promises the advent of “personalized medicine”, in which drugs and drug combinations are optimized for each individual's unique genetic makeup. 'DNA profiling' (popularly known as 'DNA fingerprinting') is just another consequence of the uniqueness of the human genome.

The “personalized medicine” approach falls under p h a r m a co g e n o m i c s , wh i c h i s a b ra n c h o f pharmacology and it deals with the influence of genetic variation in drug response in patients by correlating gene expression or single-nucleotide polymorphisms with a drug's efficacy or toxicity. Explained in a non-scientific terminology, we can say that every individual has a characteristic endurance or tolerance level for a specific amount of a specific drug or medicine and a particular dose of drug or medicine may not be prescriptible for all individuals who suffer from the same ailment. Thus, this HGP enables us to design a system which allows each individual's genetic constitution to be critically analyzed and the drug prescribed accordingly. This in turn will be cardinal in promoting the general health of the public.

HGP has such tremendous and stunningly fantastic results that one could hardly envisage. Another drastic denouement is of horoscopy.

It is believed that the genome contains every bit and piece of information about an individual and consequently his entire profile can be scanned by the sequencing of his genomic DNA. Even his interests, dispositions, inclinations etc. are said to be embedded in his genomic bp sequence and can be easily read aloud once his DNA has been decoded. The astrology that is said to have supernaturally and metaphysically ordained actually is said to have been predisposed in the formation of an individual's genome and consequently every single genome corresponds to a unique augury for the particular individual carrying that genome.

If these predispositions are to be believed then, perhaps, genome is going to be the most indispensible factor for the future universe. It will be the template on which a prospective genome-based society will be built.

What I am trying to say amounts to a system which has genome-based applications running in every aspect of life! Let us say a leader is to be selected for a particular organization. The personalized genomic array of all candidates can then readily be compared with the standard model of the candidate for the post, and computational evaluation will yield who is the most deserving or apt person for the particular post. This would eliminate any kind of prejudice based on caste, 24

creed or religion as is prevalent in the modern scenario and thus will get rid of the stigma of corruption on the society as the candidate-selection process is a purely scientific one. Similarly, mate-matching would also be revolutionized. It would change from purelyastrological to purely-genomic, or in other words, astrology would have a new meaning in the genome era that we can expect in the future.

The genome-based faculty would also be fully secure and robust. Being purely scientific, it would be flawproof. This would have tremendous benefits for the imminent community because being immaculate, it would be completely unobjectionable and may serve as a yardstick with which to measure the level of progress and fallacy of the impending society.

I think it would be right to conclude the analysis of the Human Genome Project at this juncture by one last speck of information which I have already stated but not elaborated. Our genome in some way, which is not yet completely discovered, carries the knowledge about our natural propensity to be inclined towards something, be it the inclination towards some particular arena of work and research, be it the inclination towards people of the opposite or same gender, be it the inclination towards religion and transcendentalism, be it the inclination towards nation and patriotism, be it the inclination towards fashion, food, luxury or any other aspect of life that the human faculty can think of. There is absolute reality and tangibility in these biological idiosyncrasies.

The real challenge of human biology, beyond the task of genome sequencing of individuals for creating their own genetic profiles, will lie ahead as we seek to mechanize these processes at far better rates and in far lesser time, and the implementation of the results of these processes for creating a genome-based society, well-enough to solve the problems of our own existence.

References/Web links for further information The links below could help in having a more detailed understanding of the HGP:References/Web links for further information The links below could help in having a more detailed understanding of the HGP:-• http://www.sciencemag.org/content/291/5507/130 4.full.pdf • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfsHl5_2rMw • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Venter • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacogenomics • http://lib.bioinfo.pl • http://famous-relationships.topsynergy.com/JCraig-Venter/Mentality.asp About the Author Anmol Awasthi (amol@iitk.ac.in) is a second year undergraduate student in the Department of Chemistry, IIT Kanpur. This article is a part of his report of research study did under Professor Dr. Pradeep Sinha of BSBE during the summers of 2012.

SnT ARTICLE

Aditya Tandon

Artificial Life The aim of this project was to simulate some kind of life form through a computer model. We also tried to incorporate several biological principles into our simulation, so that it may even be used as a teaching aid.

We completed the project in Java with the help from BRaIN (Biological Research and Innovation Network) and Programming Club.

When we began with our project, we started with a simple system, a forest with trees. The idea was that each tree will be described by some numbers (like age, height, energy, etc). Energy will be given to this system in the form of packets of light. As light comes down it is absorbed by the plant and when the energy reaches a certain value, an identical copy (almost, just *slightly* randomly mutated) of the plant is created. Even in such a simple system we should expect selection of taller trees as they receive more energy and hence reproduce more.

After simulating this, we added more features, like the possibility of the user changing initial parameters that we previously chose arbitrarily. The trees were made more complicated, using more parameters; their growth was made more realistic (younger trees grow more than older ones). Instead of reproducing asexually, the trees now reproduced sexually with neighboring trees.

Once this was complete, we added another species that would feed on the trees: giraffes. Giraffes were slightly more complicated than the trees. It was described by many more parameters. It could move around and eat trees. If a tree was higher than the giraffe then the giraffe could not eat from that tree.

Thus again, we should expect the neck length of the giraffes to increase over time (since the giraffes with greater neck length would have a greater chance of survival over others, any mutation that increases height would be favored by the environment).

With still some time left, we added yet another species that would hunt giraffes: lions. But since the GUI was already crowded with giraffes and trees we decided that these mythical beasts would fly. The parameters were similar to the giraffes except that movement was in two directions instead of one.

In remaining time, we made the functions as close to reality as possible. For example, the movement of the giraffes was now based on the number of trees, number of females, and number of lions in a particular direction

and his energy status. So, a hungry giraffe would care less about females and more about trees (food).

As a part of the GUI features, the user could play as God and select particular organisms to modify their parameters or even kill them. We also added graphs to better monitor data like the average height of trees, population, etc.

Such a simulation can be used, among other things, at natural parks where we can simulate beforehand how many trees, giraffes and lions should be introduced so that the system is stable.

We n o t i c e d s eve ra l interesting phenomena during the project: As an example, when no giraffes and lions are present, we added another parameter to the trees, that of 'colour'. If two trees had drastically different colours they could not reproduce with each other.

For example, a light green tree could reproduce with a dark green tree but not with a red tree. The colour was also passed on the offspring following Mendelian laws of genetics, again with some mutation. Now, let's say we start with green and red trees uniformly distributed.

After a while, we observed that similar trees would group together; even though it was not 'hard-coded' in them to arrange themselves in groups. It simply happened because green trees far away from each other could not reproduce while green trees nearby could.

It is absolutely intriguing that with all these functions and apparently very life-like behavior; at the end of it they are all just groups of numbers changing with time.

A complete list of parameters and functions for all species can be found in our project documentation at http://students.iitk.ac.in/pro jects/brain_virtual_ecosyste o r m http://pclub.in/wiki/index.p hp/Forest_Simulation .

This project is an open source; so anyone can modify and build upon it. The link to the github repository is also included in the wiki.

Project Team Members The project team consisted of Aditya Tandon, Anurag Kaushal and Devendra Mandan. This project was done under SciTech council of IIT Kanpur in summers of 2012.

About the Author Aditya Tandon (adityat@iitk.ac.in) is a second year undergraduate student in the Department of Physics, IIT Kanpur. He is an active member of Book Club, BRaIN and NERD HERD.

25

SnT ARTICLE

Rubik's Cube Solver As the name suggests, the aim of our project was to make a robot which solves Rubik's cube (a 3D mechanical puzzle). A pivot mechanism enables each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the colours. For the puzzle to be solved, each face must be returned to one colour configuration.

The making of the robot was divided into four parts, namely mechanical design, electronics, programming and image processing.

The mechanical design of the robot consists of grippers which can hold the cube and the motors which can rotate the cube precisely by 90 degrees. We have used 4 grippers in our 'bot that can give 4 possible rotations to the cube. To rotate the top and bottom faces of the cube we can move two grippers simultaneously so that the c u r re n t to p fa c e becomes the front face and then can be rotated by 90 degrees. Thus all the six faces of the cube can be rotated through our mechanical design.

The biggest problem that we faced during the making of this bot was the exact alignment of all the motors so that there would be no error in rotation of each face o f t h e c u b e independently. We would like to give credit to Mr. Santosh who helped us a lot in getting all the individual parts of the model cut through laser jet machine established in 4i lab.

The electronic part basically contains a microcontroller which is the brain of the robot. Like a brain, it stores the program in it and controls the functioning of the motors and hence all the motors are connected directly or indirectly to it like nerves in our brain. As motors could not be run all the time, we required an automatic kind of switch which is achieved by connecting the motors to the microcontroller through a motor driver.

Image processing is a technique to store the colours of any object in a format that can be processed through codes and programs. We required the initial images of all the six faces of the cube that could be fed into our program and hence image processing was done externally in a box. In image processing, one has to be very careful with the lighting conditions; otherwise if 26

Harshad Sawhney

there is ambient or high intensity light falling on the colours of the cube then the colours may not be detected correctly. Also one has to calibrate each colour reading.

So we did it externally to avoid any kind of error.

The programming part was an important aspect of this project. We used an algorithm that could solve the cube in less than 23 moves. It takes the input i.e. the colours of the images and then gives a solution. Then the cube has to be just placed in the mechanical model and the cube will get automatically descrambled.

One of our future improvements in the robot is to implement image processing in the mechanical model which could make the project more compact.

Apart from the technicalities, the making of the bot was a lot of fun, and it equally enriched our skills and knowledge. In our childhood days we all are impressed with robots that we see as toys or on television and we got a chance to create our own bot which also taught us to work in a team. We got to practically implement the theories that we have m u g g e d u p throughout our lives.

We have heard that the best way to learn i s t o d o a n experiment or apply it practically, and now we realize that it is true.

T h e l i n k to o u r p ro j e c t d o c u m e n t a t i o n i s http://students.iitk.ac.in/projects/roboticsclub/rubik -2 We are thankful to the co-ordinators of Robotics club and to all those who helped us in making our project.

Project Team members The project team consisted of Anurag Lohia, Harshad Sawhney, Prashant Jalan, Priyanka Harlalka and Sakshi Sinha. This project was done under SciTech council of IIT Kanpur in summers of 2012.

About the Author Harshad Sawhney is a second year undergraduate student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kanpur. He is an active member of Robotics club and NERD HERD.

SnT ARTICLE

VTOL - The Rising Star

Tanmay Jaipurkar

IIT Kanpur provides us with a lot of opportunities to explore any field; let it be science, culture or literature.

Summer is the time when students get some leisure time to follow their interests and various student clubs are doing their best to provide us with platforms to achieve and learn as per our interests.

Let's come to VTOL! It stands for Vertical Take Off and Landing, a project on which was made under Aero modeling club this summer. There are various examples of VTOL like helicopter, Harrier Jump Jets and various military surveillance vehicles that monitor risk prone

while increasing the strength of model and making it more symmetric.

The motivation for making the second model (picture on right) which is a flying sphere came from the fact that the first model is difficult to land and in case of crash, propeller usually breaks. So spherical structure provides protective covering while landing, it is safer for indoor flying as the propeller is covered, can reach small corners and nooks as well. It has science similar to the first model but has a total of 8 control surfaces, 3 gyros for the 3 mutually perpendicular axes (roll, yaw and

areas. Their special ability to take off, hover and land on a spot makes them very important and versatile. Let it be any war situation or disaster relief activity or traffic surveillance, VTOL vehicles come in handy.

Coming to the models that were made this summer, are two VTOL models, first an RC-plane and second a flying sphere. The plane (picture on left) is made such that it lifts off from ground similar to a helicopter and after attaining a certain height it just converts into a normal plane (i.e. noses down itself). Propeller on the top provides the upward thrust for lift off while the antitorque of motor is balanced by the 4 control surfaces at the bottom. As the amount of thrust and thus antitorque to be balanced is variable, the anti-torque is controlled by gyro (a type of sensor) which provides appropriate deflection to control surface to balance the model rotationally about its axis. So far, this model is made rotationally stable and further testing is going on

pitch) for better stability. It is proposed to move in 8 directions easily, while remaining vertically stable.

Further developments we planned include making model light, installing a camera on it so that its utility can be increased.

The model was made by a group of four 2nd year undergraduate students Tanmay Jaipurkar, Shilpa Jaiswal, Anjani Kumar and Shefali Garg this summer under Aero modeling club. Further information is on the website http://students.iitk.ac.in/aeromodelling/ About the Author Tanmay Jaipurkar is a 2nd year undergraduate student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Kanpur.

His is very enthusiastic about Aero modeling, specifically about designing new types of flying models like VTOL, hovercrafts etc. His hobbies include writing poems, flying RC planes and Taekwondo.

27

PUZZLE

Crossword

ACROSS 1.

Part of a closed-loop system (pl.)

7.

Current-voltage phase mnemonic 10. Binary Coded Decimal 13. Tough drill bit material 18. Morse Code for "from" 19. Cable termination type 20. Type of data conversion device (abbr.)

21. Chemical symbol for europium 22. Start frequency (abbr.)

23. Unit of length (abbr.)

24. Imaging device (abbr.)

27. High-speed logic family 29. 1/000 of an inch 31. Electromagnetic interference (abbr.)

34. Chemical symbol for argon 35. Color quality 37. Display type 39. Short for modulator/demodulator (pl.)

41. Global System for Mobile Communications (abbr.)

43. Centimeter (abbr.)

44. A concern of Boolean equations 46. Filter type that blocks upper frequencies (abbr.)

48. Chemical symbol for dysprosium 49. Chemical symbol for helium 50. Sound frequency in the human hearing range (abbr.)

52. Slow flow of metal when under high temperature or great pressure 28

Shoubhik Gupta

DOWN 1.

Frequency Division Duplex 2.

BS__ - the degree held by many RF Cafe visitors 3.

Troubleshooting software 4.

Chemical symbol for aluminum 5.

Mr. Piper's famous yellow airplane 6.

Mass unit (abbr.)

7.

Opposite of O.D. 8.

Software engineering tool (abbr.)

9.

ECM response 11. European equivalent to the U.L. 12. Type of load used in place of an antenna during transmitter testing 13. Curly-Q type light bulb (abbr.)

14. Chemical symbol for arsenic 15. Graphics file types 16. Decimeter (abbr.)

17. Using the moon as a passive reflector to establish a signal path; moon bounce (abbr.)

24. Capable of being cascaded 25. Chemical symbol for chromium 26. Cellular Digital Packet Data 28. Numerical basis for decibels (abbr.)

30. Network department (abbr.)

32. Unit of frequency (archaic, abbr.)

33. A complex quantity that can describe either impedance or admittance 35. Communication between stations by reflecting the radio waves off of the ionosphere 36. Electronics Industry Association (abbr.)

53.

55.

58.

59.

61.

64.

66.

67.

69.

70.

71.

73.

74.

76.

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81.

82.

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90.

91.

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105.

106.

108.

109.

112.

113.

115.

116.

118.

120.

122.

123.

124.

125.

126.

A feedback scheme to level out the receiver audio volume (abbr.)

2/3 of a triac 300 kHz to 3 MHz Filter type that blocks upper frequencies (abbr.)

Plural of locus 2 x SSB The UK's largest defense electronics contractor (abbr.)

Effect (named after its discoverer) that is the variation in the width of the base in a BJT due to a variation in the applied base-to-collector International Amateur Radio Union (abbr.)

PC follower Type of current Type of microwave diode 360 degrees of phase rotation Stock symbol for Lockheed Martin International Reply Coupon (abbr.)

Automated universal inductance tester - watch that 3rd letter, (abbr.)

Front edge of a wing (abbr.)

Infrared (abbr.)

Have a positive phase w.r.t a reference Type of data conversion device (abbr.)

International phonetic alphabet letter "D" 3 MHz to 30 MHz Band between RF and BB Filter type that blocks frequencies below and above a specified band (abbr.)

Mr. DeForest's first name Ratio of output to input power, voltage, current, light, etc. (pl.)

Chemical symbol for lanthanum Unit of admittance What current is said to do, past tense Type of computer display (abbr.)

Satellite TV system A BPF specification (abbr.)

Last statement in a BASIC program Colorado Springs military school (abbr.)

Singulated piece of IC wafer U.K. equivalent of the IEEE 1/6 inch printer's measure Chemical symbol for cadmium Logarithmic ratio (abbr.)

Amateur Radio Association (abbr.)

Amateur radio enthusiast Chemical symbol for californium Having a small magnitude for S21 (2 wds.)

Unit of energy Computer "brain" (abbr.)

BNC, SMA, N, or 7/16

38.

40.

41.

42.

44.

45.

47.

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68.

72.

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122.

Chemical symbol for chlorine Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (abbr.)

Electronics manufacturer with "meatball" logo 1/000 of an amp (abbr.)

One component of volume A gaseous process that deposits insulating films or metal onto a wafer at elevated temperature (abbr.)

Part of an optical cable bundle Filter type that blocks lower frequencies (abbr.)

Integral of the magnetic vector field over a surface (pl.)

Certificate of Successful Completion of Examination (abbr.)

A common battery cell size Wireless phone region Steel, brass, aluminum, etc.

Constellation : The lyre Person responsible for program spending (abbr.)

Chemical symbol for calcium Indium phosphide Word used in describing 2-D and 3-D object dimensions Chemical symbol for lithium Chemical symbol for copper High power density battery chemistry (abbr.)

Akin to an EE, CE, AE, etc.

CDMA Development Group (abbr.)

30 kHz to 300 kHz Digital Enhanced Cordless Telephone Software drafting tool (abbr.)

The system that converts common website names to IP addresses (abbr.)

Type of modulation (abbr.)

Galilean moon One of many similar appendages of a fan Semiconductor lamp Chemical symbol for erbium First name of a British scientist of falling apple fame Army-Navy specification prefix Control language used by Hewlett Packard printers, abbr.

Small unit of capacitance (abbr.)

2/3 of a triac Chemical symbol for iron Keyboard key Agilent's EE design software (abbr.)

Effective Radiated Power (abbr.)

ELI the ICE ___ Discipline for aircraft navigation in low visibility environments (abbr.)

Chemical symbol for molybdenum Chemical symbol for cesium Chemical symbol for bromine Chemical symbol for gold Chemical symbol for holmium Chemical symbol for manganese Chemical symbol for cobalt

You can send your complete crossword solution (scanned copies or solutions written on a paper) to Shoubhik Gupta (shoubhik@iitk.ac.in , H-103, Hall 5; +919807727563). Top entries will win interesting prizes and gifts.

29

ARTICLE

SCoPE TALK REVIEW Professor Deepak Kumar, JNU Arjun Ravichandran and Anika Jain

Prof. Deepak Gupta remarked about his first time visit to IIT Kanpur and Kanpur in general, which is known as the Manchester of India. He touched upon the issue of how the history of Kanpur was lost by burning. He commented on how humans are least bothered about learning from the past, lacking hindsight.

Universities and Institutes in India made useful contributions, even in pre-independent times. While one speaks of knowledge and development from an Indian perspective, on perceives knowledge as liberation. Whereas the Greeks considered Knowledge as power, Indian scholars pursued knowledge to understand human-nature interactions. By liberations, Indians meant to find the root cause of Disease, hunger, body and soul relationship and ultimately Moksha, and to arrive at meaningful results.

Early Indian knowledge was classified into “Para & Apara”, meaning the same as “Manqul & Maqul”, from Persian “Aql”. Similar arguments can also be presented for “Gyaan – knowledge as art” and “Vigyaan – Distilled Knowledge comparable to science” Whereas no way was presented to scientifically test Nirvana by anyone in history, many scientific thoughts had come to a roadblock after much reasoning because proper means to test logic was lacking. By analyzing the past and the way humans have used technology to interact with nature, a very important fact can be perceived that “So long as we are Homo-Sapiens, we continue to delve on knowledge unearthing”. For the advancement of humanity, we should underestimate empirical knowledge and concentrate our efforts on knowledge that is general and applicable at all instances.

From Wheel to Sunita Williams space walk, tremendous breakthroughs have been made. Every Society and Generation has contributed to knowledge. This has not been because of any single science prophet in India, but by the efforts of millions of individuals who had contributed to the knowledge bank India has.

India has been a knowledge oriented society from ancient era. Ancestors in past helped improve our knowledge society. The way Indian civilization evolved knowledge has been by incremental additions to the widely followed texts, like the Arthasastra or Silpasutras. That canonized knowledge followed by billions was not practically changed overnight by a paradigm shift like the Renaissance in Europe, but by writing commentaries, denoting the positives and negatives of the work of great people. This way, our clever Indian Society, never allowed revolutions to happen, but a gradual phase change. However, in 30

th

Western Europe, change started taking place in 14-16 century through renaissance & revolution, involving violence and bloodshed. India also had great reformers in the past, but it broke down to Social Reformers, viz.

Akbar, Ramanujam, Kabir, Meera Bai. Thus, great scientists were lost down the line during the 14 - 16 century. th The 17 century Europe saw Newton & Galileo, but none in the Indian Society. China produced wheels for modern engines and progress whereas India was bogged down by caste system. This was particularly because those working with hands never had interactions with those working with their minds. Since there was no interaction, there was no synergy either.

One of the major set-back because of this policy was that, even though Indians were known to making Glass Bangles from Harappan times, it took a Dutch lensmaker, Antony van Leeuwenhoek, to invent the first optical microscope. This paved way for studying Microorganisms, improving Heath care by leaps and bounds Another drawback of the absence of Knowledge society was Colonization. Industrial revolution in Europe increased productivity and generated wealth. Research improved and Europeans were technologically advanced when they were set for colonization of the entire world. th Whereas the 19 century India aimed at improvement, th the 20 century focussed on Development of knowledge infrastructure. Great reformists like Tagore on realising that our heritage home had become an epitome of backwardness, wanted an India that was industrialized and mined, but with morality. Mahatma Gandhi always said if ever in dilemma about the relevance of your action, think of its impact on poorest of poor. Today, our country is proud of numerous citadels of knowledge but in one aspect the modern education system is killing curiosity .Innovation, in our dictionaries has been replaced by the cliche “Jugaad”.

We need to understand unless we challenge ourselves, we can't grow. The more uncomfortable a question gets, the more power it carries to resolve the unknown mysteries .The feeling of inquisition has to come from within. Antony van Leeuwenhoek wrote in a letter that his work, which he has done for a long time, was pursued from a craving after knowledge and indeed it was this dedication which had him make over 500 microscopes.

It is time to allow for free movement of knowledge and have a good understanding of history to make our present and future more opportunistic.

It's time to realise the famous quote, “Men have become the tools of their tools.”

PUZZLE

Sound and Light Solution to V4N4 puzzle

This puzzles contains 52 words related to ‘‘Sound and Light’’. Try to find them.

31

ARTICLE

Weight of Internet Using some very rough maths, it's been estimated that the internet weighs about the same as a medium-sized egg.

The weight of all the electrons in motion that make up the internet at any one moment is equivalent to 50 grams, according to Vsauce, a YouTube channel.

It seems to be inspired by recent reports noting that each book loaded onto and Amazon Kindle e-reader makes the device very slightly heavier.

Using Einstein's E=mc² formula, which states that energy and mass are directly related, Professor John Kubiatowicz, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, calculated that filling a 4GB Kindle to its storage limit would increase its weight by a billionth of a billionth of a gram, or 0.000000000000000001g.

For full explanation of the 50 gram weight estimate for the internet, please visit the following link. Vsauce says this weight is the same as a strawberry. It would have to be a very large strawberry though. www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaUzu-iksi8 The maths relies on dated figures, however. The estimate that there are between 75 and 100 million servers online was around back in 2006, for example. In the five years since then many more vast data centres have been constructed by the likes of Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Similarly, server processors now run at higher clock speeds.

For one more interesting account of weight of softwares, please visit the following link: http://scienceblogs.com/pontiff/2008/05/2 7/the-weight-of-software/

Sources: Vsauce, a YouTube channel, telegraph.co.uk , scienceblogs.com Image courtesy: access.com 32