Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Sandy and Neelam: The need for a Worldwide Tropical Storm index


Sandy and Neelam have been unwelcome visitors in our household in Bangalore. With close family ties to family and friends in Chennai and on the US East Coast, we have been regularly watching TV and the Sandy crisis map put out by Google over the last few days.

The older generation comes to a quick conclusion: cutting of trees all over, and pollution! What else do you expect?

Was the ferocity of Sandy increased by climate change? Visit http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2012/10/30/science/ap-us-sci-superstorm-climate.html?ref=science for one report. I looked for other information and found that geophysicists have studied the question: is there a steady increase in storm activity over the decades, given that there has been a small rise in the ocean surface temperature? Visit Journal of Geophysical Research for a scholarly study on the trend in Atlantic Hurricane Activity covering 1851-2007. They report a periodic variation with a 60 year period. What are the possible causes of such a periodic variation? The variation in solar radiation reaching the earth? Sunspot activity? Brief searches did not get any answers to these questions. 

http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes offers a discussion on global warming and hurricane activity from a Govt Lab. http://www.igu.in/15-2/4uma.pdf reports an Indian study focusing on the North Indian Ocean, where we have cyclones similar to the hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean.

I feel that we need a worldwide Storm Activity Index (SAI) to be compiled from now on. It would support research on possible effects of global warming. It would in fact do more. Remember the clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that used to warn us about the remaining time to (nuclear) midnight! The SAI will similarly communicate to the lay person a sense of increasing concern, related to global warming. Scholars could look over the last ten or more decades to see what the trend was in the past. Awareness of the dangers of global warming over the whole of the world population is a necessity, and SAI would be a step in this direction. I would vote for the base to be set at 100, representing the level of activity seen during the first decade of the 21st Century.

Srinivasan Ramani

 

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Apps that make low-end cell phones valuable


There was a time when young people excited about electronics would build themselves a radio! Now young people excited about computing and the Internet create an app! I will talk about apps that make low-end cellphones valuable. I hope to trigger many student projects with this posting.
As far as I know, it is impossible to get apps to run on most low-end cell-phones. These devices are nevertheless very important in countries like India, where they constitute a large fraction of cell phones in use. They serve millions of users who do not have access to the Internet for various reasons. My focus is on school students in small towns and in rural areas. What I say in this blog does not apply to sophisticated smart phone users. Since 2/3rds of cell phones are in the hands of rural users, my focus is socially very relevant.

An accompanying post on my other blog at http://obvioustruths.blogspot.in/2012/09/the-reality-of-mobile-value-added.html provides relevant statistics on the way cell-phones are used in India for non-voice services. The key points arising out of the discussion in that post are the following: The average cell phone user in India uses less than Rs 90 of services per month. About 70% of this is for voice calls, leaving only Rs 24 for other services. Mobile apps and games take hardly Rs 5 per month. A major factor that inhibits use of Internet applications on the cell phone is the complexity of the human interface. Most users do not know how to download and install apps and how to use a browser effectively. They do not know how to get information on these topics and learn these skills.

My thesis is that the SMS (or texting) interface is easy to use for a large fraction of the population. I also believe that a whole lot can be achieved using a servlet on the web somewhere. It can serve a large population that is comfortable with the SMS interface. Of course, in parallel it can also serve smart phone users with access to a 2G or 3G service.

I was thrilled to discover a few months ago that the site txtweb.com (created and being maintained by Intuit Inc.) offers a painless SMS interface for servlets to deliver services. This site transforms SMS messages into http queries to send to your servlet and maps the servlet’s responses into SMS messages that are sent back to the users. There is no charge for this service. There is a healthy developer community and a forum.

Txtweb.com offers a challenge to every student who can create a servlet. It is not mere programming. The opportunity challenges you to think like an entrepreneur and identify a service that meets the needs of a large number of cell phone users. Creating a service like that is a good project for a team, as it requires talents of different kinds: to visualize a good application, to find necessary resources on the Web, to design and implement the software and to publicize the service.

For an example of a service of the type I have discussed, try the one I have implemented. It supports school students, typically those in the 9th and 10th standards in their efforts to learn the English language. It helps any interested user to test his or her own ability to guess a word that fills a blank in a given sentence meaningfully. It is well-known that this a good test of English comprehension.

The site focuses on common English words found in every science textbook. These are not “scientific” words, but words that every English-medium student of science has to know. The idea is that students can take a new test every month and know where they stand. Testing is an important part of teaching, but only a small part. Ideally the student should take the help of a relative or friend to discuss questions. The student should read English language books outside the syllabus – ideally story books that are very interesting. They should learn to use a dictionary well and frequently. 


The following web pages describe how this service can be accessed over SMS from within India 
http://www.hydrusworld.org/Tests over SMS.html

and over Instant Messaging from anywhere on the Web
http://www.hydrusworld.org/Tests over IM.html
I should mention that my Java Servlet is hosted on the Google App Engine cloud for free (visit https://developers.google.com/) for information on this facility.
I hope that readers of this post would go on and create many other services to serve a needy population.

Srinivasan Ramani 

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

A Design to be put on top of the Seattle Space Needle



I received an email recently, inviting me to participate in a contest for creating a design to be put on top of the Seattle Space Needle (read about it in the Wikipedia). Yes, I have a design proposal, but it is not the type that conforms to the template they have given. What they seem be looking for is well-illustrated at http://www.spaceneedle.com/ This site describes the contest and invites everyone to submit a design if they so wish. The deadline is Sept 20, 2012 and the occasion is the 50thanniversary celebration of the structure. They wish to get the design up on the roof in six months. Let them do it; there will be plenty of room to add the design proposed here at a later date! What follows is a description of the idea that requires able structural designers to convert into a design. I think it will be very exciting for students of structural engineering and architecture to take this up as a project. The use of composites seems to be very necessary for the proposed construction –materials such as carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP). So, there is the associated challenge of using advanced materials in an imaginative manner.

The Concept: Build a prototype of a Space Elevatorto sit atop the Space Needle. It won’t take you to the altitude of geocentric satellites! But it will drive millions of people to think seriously about the concept. Wikipedia mentions Elevator: 2010, a site that describes prizes worth millions of dollars for technological advances in the area. Perhaps some of the readers of this blog posting would come up with ideas to win some of these prizes!

Why Seattle? Seattle is a city with a number of high tech industries including Boeing and Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft is reported to have sponsored the annual Space Elevator Conferences over the last five years (Visit NASA’s Strong tether challenge). Boeing is using advanced materials such as CFRP to build very fuel-efficient planes, such as the 787 Dreamliner. Right next to the Space Needleis the well-known Pacific Science Center. Between them, the Space Needle and the Science Center draw millions of visitors every year.

The Proposal: To design a tower that will weigh a very small fraction of the 9550 ton Space Needle. It would not carry anyone up but will allow an elevator capsule, with its top and bottom shaped like bullet heads, to run up and down to illustrate the idea. And, of course, this tower would not carry any fancy restaurant on top! The capsule would carry multiple video-cameras, images from which would be projected inside a hall resembling an IMAX theatre, at ground level. Visitors to this theatre would experience virtual reality trips into space. A part of the experience would show the panoramic view from the elevator capsule, as it ascends and descends; the rest would be computer graphics and animation. At the top of the tower will be what looks like another elevator capsule. It will be stationary, but onlookers will hopefully get the illusion that it is on its way up!

Questions:

Can we use four or five columns and enclosing circular rings to create the tower? Putting a skin around a tower might increase wind resistance and achieve little, except increased visibility. So, can the tower be built with no skin around it? Can we run the elevator capsule inside the structure? Should it be supported by a cable made of advanced materials, or would it better to have toothed rails supported by which the battery powered elevator could climb? How can we improve the visibility of the structure during day and during night?

How much weight can the roof of the space needle carry? How can a structure be affixed to the space needle, without disturbing its circular symmetry? What would be the weight of the new structure – can it be as light as 10 to 100 tons? How high will it rise above the roof of the space needle? Can we hope for it to be in the range of 400 to 1000 feet? Can it be designed to withstand the 200 mph winds, and the 9.1 magnitude Earthquake that the space needle is said to be designed for? How much would the whole thing cost? What would be a reasonable cap to put on the cost, to reflect financial realities? Would the proposal generate additional revenue for the space needle and the science center? How would the city benefit from the project?

What are the problems the designers have to solve? How would they ensure the safety of the tower and of aircraft, given that Seattle has lots of sea-planes constantly using its lakes?

Finally, why Seattle, and why not another city, forgetting for a moment the value of the space needle as a base? Why not a place thirty miles outside a big city, to draw crowds to a new place where shops and restaurants could be developed, creating jobs?

A couple of answers: Air safety issues are not a distraction. The real space elevator, if and when it is built, will create a massive air safety problem, not to mention the risks created by satellites orbiting at an altitude much lower than the top of the tower! So, why not handle a small-scale air-safety system for starters?

On the issue of making the elevator visually prominent: The trick seems to be in painting the two capsules in a carefully chosen color to contrast against the sky. It would be valuable to have bright lights on the capsules, to ensure their visibility at night. 

I welcome comments and suggestions. I would also welcome an artistically inclined reader contributing an illustration that does not infringe on other peoples’ Copyright. I tried making a collage out of the Wikimedia image of the KCCI tower and the Wikipedia image of the space needle, but gave up because of my limited skills with graphics!

Srinivasan Ramani

Monday, August 06, 2012

Probes to Mars and Student Projects


It is official now – the Indian cabinet has approved the Indian Mars probe to be launched in 2013. It will not attempt a landing on Mars like the NASA Mars Rover named Curiosity. It will presumably orbit the planet, as news items have said that the Indian probe will study the Martian atmosphere, climate and geology.
Incidentally, as I write this, the NASA website http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html is displaying a count down timer showing that Curiosity is expected to touch down on Mars in twenty minutes! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48493172/ns/technology_and_science-space/ reports the cost of this US mission to be $2.5 billion. In, comparison, the budget for the Indian mission is reported to be $70-90 million. Visit
for more information on the budget estimate.

You need to be very creative when you are in a game where other players are spending over thirty times what you will be spending! A lot of creativity in India will need to be tapped. University research involving students is well-known to unleash a whole lot of creativity. Many great technologies - for instance, a good part of what is Internet technology today - has come out of universities.

I would like to stimulate student projects in electronics, physics, instrumentation, or computer science. There are possibilities for interesting life-science activities as well. I will raise a few questions relevant to all this. 
Would there be any electrical phenomena in the rarefied Martian atmosphere, perhaps resembling thunder and lightning? The atmospheric pressure there is less than one per cent of the atmospheric pressure on the earth. The Martian atmosphere consists mostly of carbon dioxide.  What instrumentation can you propose and or prototype that will help study these electrical phenomena? Is there anything like Aurora Borealis over there, in the absence of any significant magnetic field? How can that be detected?

Can a life-science department build a Martian atmosphere simulator, using a large drum, filled with mostly carbon dioxide at a very small pressure and lit by selected lamps to provide heat and light resembling what is available from the Sun on the Martian surface? Can we grow any form of plant, or microbial, life in this atmosphere? 

Will it be useful to fly even a small (robotic) astronomical  telescope in Martian orbit? What will be its special advantages? I can think of three. One is that this telescope can look at that part of the sky that is unavailable at a given time to observers on the earth, because the Sun is in that direction. Anything interesting happening in that part of the sky would be useful to observe. The second thought is that a telescope in Martian orbit could give us an entirely different way to observe asteroids and comets. These observations would complement earth-based observations, and observations from earth orbit.  The third possibility is that a telescope in Martian orbit could give us a view of the Sun different from what we get from the Earth. This could help us study of sunspots and flares better.
A question that arises is this: why Martian orbit? Is it not sufficient to have instrumentation on a space-craft in any Solar orbit? For some of the purposes discussed above, any Solar orbit would do. But we can think of some advantages like the radiation shielding provided by a body like Mars. A related thought brings us to a big question.

Can a Mars probe land on Phobos or Deimos, one of the Martian moons? Such a landing would be much easier than landing on Mars because of the reduced gravity.

A long-shot question is about the possibilities of a base on Phobos or Deimos for supporting travel to Mars and back. Such a base would provide logistic support and act as a staging station. There has been some talk of frozen ice on Phobos as it seems to be made of porous rock. That has some implications too. Can we detect minute quantities of water evaporating off the surface of Phobos, perhaps by having a Mars probe do a close pass to Phobos? 

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has a program named RESPOND to support sponsored research in its areas of interest, with a budget of Rs 15 Crores per year. Visit
for more information.

I have no personal experience of working with a project funded by RESPOND, and hope that the program interprets its areas of interest in a flexible manner to encourage creativity. Sometimes a funding agency encourages university groups to think big and come up with novel ideas that they may not have in their plan of work. That is what we should expect out of ISRO. Another point is about the balance between science and engineering. ISRO should support research in engineering and technology as much as in science. The number of engineering students doing project work in India is huge. Let us tap their creativity. Can they build a “lander” that can be dropped from a height of ten meters and land smoothly on the ground, using rockets and an on-board control computer? Can some of them design and prototype a robot that could hop around the surface of Phobos or Deimos and report its observations? Robotics is one of the central technologies for ISRO. It should be identified as a major area of research under RESPOND.  

Everything university research focuses on does not have to be built. Some may result only in the exploration of ideas and study results. Some may yield good publications or impressive demos. They should all be welcome.

Srinivasan Ramani 

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Sending Hindi in Devanagari Script over SMS



Efficient communication between the majority of Indians requires the use of Indian languages. It is not currently easy, whether it is over the Internet or over the cellular network. We have to research on and develop easier ways of using Indian languages. One simple approach I describe here deals with only one aspect of the problem. My hope is that this will still stimulate the reader to investigate problems that a user faces when using a browser on the web or text over cell phones. There are a variety of technical problems there. You may wish to start your exploration by visiting
This posting refers to a Nokia manual
I have not tried communicating with Nokia using @NokiaIndia on Twitter
or through their blog
but you may wish to do that.
Can we invent superior interfaces for the Indian language user? I believe that an interesting approach is to use letters of the Roman Script one way or another. I would like to share what I have learnt from my experiments in this direction.
I had begun by asking myself how I could help Indian high school students learning English by giving hints and information in Hindi. I do believe that this is necessary when helping Hindi speaking students over a cell-phone channel.
I found that most cell phones in use in urban areas in India do not support sending and receiving Hindi SMS in any simple manner. I consulted an experienced technical support person in a big shop and was advised to buy a separate cell phone for the purpose. I bought one and found that I could post tweets on my Twitter page, using Hindi words in Devanagari script along with English words. I thought that my students who follow me on Twitter through their cellphones will receive my tweets properly. No, they did not! I discovered that cell-phone service providers filter incoming tweets in such a way that filters out Unicode characters of the Devanagari script.
I am going to consult Twitter in India (visit http://twitter.com/#!/twi/ )
What is the solution? I am now using the Roman Script to write out Hindi words using a simple and informal transliteration scheme (see “Devanagari Transliteration” in Wikipedia). This seems to work quite well.
Srinivasan Ramani  

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Great Science Project – detecting diseases using a simple device

Jack Andraka is a 15-year old who has invented a method for detecting some types of cancer using a very simple and inexpensive device. He has won the $75,000 Intel prize. Visit the following site for more information:

This is just the beginning! Like all great inventions, this one opens up a hundred possibilities. There is room for hundreds of student projects taking off from Andraka’s idea! There is room for hundreds of related ideas!
What is the trick? He uses a solution containing carbon nanotubes coated with antibodies for something he wants to detect – a target protein. He dips a piece of filter paper in this solution and hooks it up to a device that measures electrical conductivity. When a suitable solution containing the target protein is applied to the filter paper, there is a detectable reduction in conductivity to indicate the presence of the target protein? Why? The target protein molecules bind to the antibodies. This pushes the nanotubes apart, making space for the protein molecules. You probably know that the bond between an antibody and its target protein is very, very specific. Antibodies don’t bind to any old protein molecules!
The greatest value of Andraka’s technique idea could be in detecting infectious diseases. If you demonstrate how this can be done, you might save thousands of lives, if not millions. Want to read up on some related ideas? Visit