Meaning-based search engine
Cybersurfing
with Amar Chandel
There are any number of search engines to choose from. But they give you so many results that you are flummoxed, particularly because some of the results have nothing to do with your query.

Indigenous weather stations
by Vijay Mohan
AS military commanders peered over tactical maps and aerial reconnaissance photographs while planning air and ground assaults during the Kargil conflict, a factor vital for executing the operations was being transmitted from 800 kilometres away — weather forecast up to three days in advance to cater to the inclement climate in that region.

Science Quiz
by J. P. Garg

On patrol with computerised crack force
by Peter Lewis Young

Civilian developments in high technology are helping military planners to create the sophisticated soldier of the 21st century. Research suggests that future infantry will comprise a small, elite force, wearing and linked together with micro-computers to form a seamless web of battlefield information.

Private Jane Smith is a member of a small platoon about to set off on a reconnaissance mission.

The year is 2050 and she is equipped with micro-computer-run devices that have their roots in the information technology of the late 1990s.

A young captain briefs the platoon on the night’s work. The aim is to observe, report and return, without the enemy’s knowledge. Such patrols rarely attack enemy positions they identify. They generally mark the target with a laser, so that remotely located weapons — such as rockets, unmanned aircraft and artillery — can strike.

The captain is brief. The detail is left to an experienced sergeant.

“Remember,” says the sergeant. “This is the modern army, and you are the new, computerised soldiers. The taxpayer is providing you with more technical equipment than I could ever have imagined when I was a private. It’s there to save your life. Use it.”

The sergeant pauses to ensure that everyone is paying attention.

“The computer systems you are wearing mean that you can see at night, over hills and around corners. You can report instantly to the captain via the personal voice communicator in your helmet. We’ll all be listening in.”

He allows himself a grin.

“Even headquarters will be tuned in — so watch your language.

“And remember, if you see something important, mark it with the laser sight on your rifle, so that it’s registered as a potential target all across the military intranet. Then switch on your helmet-mounted camcorder and relay the video to us. We’ll see what you see on our helmet-mounted displays.”

The sergeant pauses again. Here comes the hard part.

“If you’re wounded, just drop. Don’t try anything heroic. You clothing is intelligent. Circuits woven into your uniform will establish where you’re hit and assess the damage to your body for the medics. If need it, your clothing will rearrange to form basic tourniquet. Your location will be instantly relayed via global positioning satellite. Just stay down. You’ll be collected.”

The sergeant waits to make sure this has sunk in.

“And finally,” he adds, “keep your helmet visor down at all times. You get your orders through your helmet — mounted display on that visor. You get your map readings through that display, including warnings about hazards and enemy positions.

“But most important of all: lift that visor and you run the risk of being blinded. These are laser beams all over the battlefield — friendly and unfriendly ones. Either way, if one hits your eye, you’ll be blind.

“Now, any questions?”

There are no questions. The platoon is keyed up and ready to go.

“Ok visors down!”

The soldiers move out into the night. Their survival will depend to a large extent on their helmet-mounted displays (HMDs). Information is projected through see-through screens onto the view ahead. This enables them to advance, watch out and be informed at the same time.

Such soldiers of the future will comprise a small, elite force, linked with manned and automated facilities to form a seamless web of battlefield information.

Australia, Britain, France and the United States are among countries currently exchanging ideas and working on projects to create the computerised 21st century soldier.

In the mid-1990s the American company Motorola won a $ 44 million contract to lead a US team to design and develop equipment. The programme’s suggestions include:

• Lightweight wearable personal computer and power pack;
• High-resolution HMD with night vision;
• “Identification — Friend or Foe” (IFF) sensor, which can “interrogate” possible targets. If the correct electronic code is returned, the computer can “lock up” a weapon to prevent firing on an ally;
• Thermal weapons sight with laser range-finder and global positioning satellite (GPS) guidance;
• Nuclear, biological and chemical warfare protective clothing and respirator;
• Lightweight body armour.

Civilian developments in computing have helped the military quest for lighter equipment and mobility. IBM now has a “wearable” computer based on its Thinkpad notebook computers. The central processing unit (CPU) attaches to a waist belt.

An alternative is to embed circuitry into the weave of uniform. A “smart shirt” project is being funded by US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency in cooperation with Yale University, of New Haven, Connecticut, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Circuitry-impregnated clothing can also vary colour to provide camouflage.

Further advances now seem possible. HMD screens could be replaced by a device that can project images onto the eye’s retina by bouncing them off special glasses. The US Army Battle Command is interested in work by Seattle-based Microvision on lasers that can do this.

Another challenge is how to perfect the soldier’s control of the wearable computer. Body-mounted keypads are being developed. These might fit the forearm and require pressing combinations of keys, like a pianist playing a chord. But remembering the right “chord” in the heat of battle could be a problem.

A supplement could be voice control Bell Laboratories of New Jersey are developing a speech-driven system that can cope with accents, battle stress and background noise.

But voice control means making sounds, which can alert an enemy. The alternative is mind control. Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has a mind-control project —designed to help the disabled — using brain implants.

However, brain implants may not be needed. Scientists in the US, Japan and Australia have devised a head strap that can be used to turn on electrical appliances by thought. There are also devices that can move a cursor on an HMD by raising an eyebrow or wrinkling the nose.

On the battlefield of 2050, the soldiers moving out on patrol have practised thought control since their induction as infantry. It is a tricky art and as much a part of their training as the rifle range.

Getting too close to the enemy position is not their role. They have a ‘pet insect’ to do that. The ‘pet’ is a robot which walks, flies and buzzes like an insect. It relays what it sees by video link up to one kilometre away. It can crawl into small openings — such as air vents in a bunker. Its introduction has “spooked” the enemy.

Back in the late 20th century, the US Defence Department funded an electronic ‘insects’ project at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Members of the 2050 computerised platoon have seen early wearable computers in the military museum. They wondered how a soldier could carry around such a load as well as regular pack and weapons.

But these new soldiers are not thinking about history as they move out. (Gemini)

Meaning-based search engine Cybersurfing
with Amar Chandel

There are any number of search engines to choose from. But they give you so many results that you are flummoxed, particularly because some of the results have nothing to do with your query.

That is why one tries all alternatives such as AskJeeves, though with limited satisfaction level. A new search engine was recommended to me highly and I tried out http://oingo.com with high hopes. But these were not really fulfilled. For example, the query, “which is the world’s most expensive car?” told me everything about the most expensive ship, coffee, cities, port, fish and bubble bath, and even about the least expensive toothbrush, but nothing about the car.

The question about India’s population evoked more focussed response, although there too one had to wade through a number of superfluous answers. Better luck next time.

* * * *

There are people who take jokes seriously. An Israeli research and development team based in New York is all set to make them a thin edge of e-commerce. It is gathering a massive body of Internet entertainment seekers who can be the client of the company in the future.

Log on to their site, www.elol.com (which stands for Electronic Laugh Out Loud) and you can download a small programme that puts an icon on your desktop. The company sends you jokes which you then rate as per your choice. Soon enough, the computer knows your tastes and sends the jokes accordingly.

The users can also send their jokes to the company, NetCustomize. The sharing of jokes is its way of building its community of potential consumers and it hopes to make money through four different revenue streams: listing advertising, e-commerce, partnering with major players in the entertainment market and consulting and employing this technology with other peers”.

That may lead to apprehension that you are being used as a guinea-pig but the company says it would never disclose to a third party any information that you provide. Well, well, well!

* * * *

Religious preachers tell you to mourn your birthdays instead of celebrating them because with every year gone by, the time allotted to you to stay on this planet is getting shorter and shorter. The site www.deathclock.com is not into preaching but it does tell you how much time you are left with - that too in exact seconds. I do not know how it selects when you are going to bid adieu but when I asked it to, it gave me the death date as Tuesday, June 12, 2029. That means that I had 931, 882,659 seconds more to utilise. Phew. Am making most of them.

This, I was told, is an optimistic assessment. If I were a pessimist, the day for the curtains was Sunday, May 15, 2016, with just 519,236,120 seconds to go, and counting.

There was a third option as well. I am not a “sadist” but asked it how much time I had if I were one. The clock whirred and this is the reply I got: “I am sorry, but your time has expired”. Here is the last column from a dead friend, folks!

The site also provides you help to write your obituary, your will and even Testament.

The ironical part is that the death clock is also for sale. Any takers? Not yours truly.

Indigenous weather stations
by Vijay Mohan

AS military commanders peered over tactical maps and aerial reconnaissance photographs while planning air and ground assaults during the Kargil conflict, a factor vital for executing the operations was being transmitted from 800 kilometres away — weather forecast up to three days in advance to cater to the inclement climate in that region.

The forecasts were formed by using data collected from Automatic Weather Stations (AWS), installed in remote reaches of the Himalayas in Jammu and Kashmir.

The AWS has been developed by the Snow and Avalanche Studies Establishment (SASE), a laboratory under Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). With its headquarters and Research and Development Centre (RDC) located at Ramgarh near Chandigarh, SASE is manned by army personnel as well as civilian personnel.

‘’Using data collected from the AWS, we were able to provide weather forecasts up to three days in advance during the Kargil operations,’’ SASE Director, Maj-Gen S.S. Sharma said. ‘’While we already have 11 AWS installed at various places in Jammu and Kashmir, another 11 stations are in the pipeline,’’ he added.

The AWS is a microprocessor based system, which consists of three main segments — the remote segment, satellite segment and the central station. The most significant feature of the system is that all electronic components at the remote station are capable of operating at minus 40 degrees celcius.

The data collection platform at the remote segment acquires data from several meteorological sensors at pre-defined intervals. The data is processed, strored locally and then transmitted to the central station through a satellite link via the INSAT II-B. The data is retrieved, demodulated and processed by computers to chart a weather forecast.

Each subsystem is based on state-of-the-art technology and the AWS operates in an unattended mode for six months in snowbound areas. Scientists at the SASE Research and Development Centre near Chandigarh say that the system is highly reliable and consumes very little power. Weighing around 5 kg, it can be manually transported to hilltops. It has a built-in uninterrupted power supply system, which draws power from a solar panel.

Data is transferred through a synthesized and multiple frequency INSAT transmitter having two SDI-12 input channels and eight analog (extendible) channels.

The system can be programmed in the field through a special card and has the capability for one year’s continuous data storage, which can be retrieved later.

Hourly data received at Chandigarh from remote stations includes maximum and minimum ambient temperature, average wind speed, average atmospheric pressure, relative humidity, snow depth, instantaneous wind direction and sunshine duration.

Two AWS have also been installed at the Indian station in Antartica during 1998 and 1999 for collecting snow and meteorological data. Data from the stations, which are operating in the stand-alone mode, is being received at the SASE RDC through e-mail.

Science Quiz
by J. P. Garg

1. Name the French chemist of the 19th century who is credited with using the terms “exothermic” and “endothermic” for the first time and also showing that chemical processes are not governed by any special laws but can be explained by general laws of mechanics.

2. We may soon have things like motor car tyres that would automatically sense low air pressure and falling level of petrol, cement concrete which would not only detect cracks but also seal these itself and airplane wings which would change their shape to increase efficiency. What are these structures called that can sense changes in their environment and then respond accordingly?

3. This highly endangered animal is hunted for its horn which is smuggled into other countries for use in medicines for increasing male potency and for treatment of blood pressure, paralysis and brain fever. Which animal are we talking about?

4. What is an F-F-F bomb?

5. Which technique is used to obtain magnetic pictures of body tissues and organs with a view to diagnosing diseases?

6. Which main gases are contained in LPG, used as household cooking fuel? Which compound is normally added to LPG to detect its leakage by smell?

7. The freezing and boiling points of ordinary water at standard atmospheric pressure are zero and 100 degree celsius, respectively. What are these values for heavy water, generally used in nuclear reactors as a moderator?

8. Suggest a method to make a piece of glass invisible. (of course without placing an opaque object between it and your eyes.)

9. “Every healthy living being has a self-regulating internal system and tends to maintain its equilibrium, irrespective of the changes in the external environment.” Which term is used for this ability of the biological systems and who introduced this term?

10. “There is only one solution for India’s economic problems and that is science, more science, and still more science”. Who said this in 1948?

Answers

1. Marcelin Berthelot 2. Smart materials 3. One-horned rhino 4. A nuclear weapon in which energy is released in three stages — fission, fusion and again fission 5. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) 6. Propane and butane; ethyl mercaptan 7. 3.8 and 101.4 degree celsius respectively 8. Place it in a transparent liquid of the same refractive index 9. Homeostasis; American physiologist Walter Cannon 10. Indian Nobel laureate Sir C.V. Raman.

Microsensors for N-waste cleanup
To find out a trace amount of a compound from radioactive and hazardous wastes inside the tanks of nuclear facilities, US researchers have developed a novel sensor that can be put in a tank for months for monitoring and measurements.

The sensor, developed by scientists at University of Cincinnati, is an improvement over existing sensors because it contains on extra “dose” of selectivity unlike sensors currently available in the market which have only one or two modes of selectivity.

In practical terms, that means the sensor has three different ways to find and identify the compound of interest which is important, because nuclear tanks are a jumbled mix of chemical and radioactive wastes.

The three-way selectivity comes from the use of selective coatings, electrochemistry, and spectroscopy.

The selective coating only shows certain compounds to enter. For example, all negatively charged ions might be able to enter the sensor while all positively charged ions are excluded.

Birth of a black hole
Scientists have found some of the best evidence yet to support the theory that the cataclysmic explosions of giant stars can lead to black holes, some of the strangest and least understood objects in the universe, Associated Press reports.

Researchers analyzed the gases near a star that wobbles around a suspected black hole, and reported in Nature that the chemicals could have originated only in the blast of a neighbouring supernova.

Black holes are massive celestial objects whose gravity is so powerful that nothing — not even light — can escape from one. Scientists cannot actually see a black hole, but they caninfer its existence from the effects on the orbits of nearby stars.

Astronomers have long suspected that a black hole and a visible star existed side-by-side in the constellation Scorpius about 10,000 light-years from Earth. Large bursts of X-rays — evidence of matter swirling around a black hole — were detected nearby.

Rebolo and his colleagues analyzed the spectrum of the visible star to decipher its chemical composition. They found an overbundance of oxygen, magnesium, silicon and sulfur — elements that could not have been produced by the visible star. Instead, the researchers speculated that the elements were spewed during the explosion of its now-dark neighbour.

“The only way you can produce an excess of these elements is through several billions of degrees,” Rebolo said. “The only way to reach these temperatures is when a star goes to a supernova situation.”

First GPS-assisted map for drivers
The country’s first digital atlas with a Global Positioning System (GPS) assisted feature has been developed by a Bangalore-based company with the help of Indian Space Research Organisation’s National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA).

The GPS feature can help drivers reach a destination through a maze of roads.

This new GPS-compatible programme by Street Atlas company could also be of great help to the security forces to track VIP movement. The feature can also help truck drivers transporting goods from one city to another if the programme is expanded to include the whole country.

Company managing director R Rajashekhar said the digital atlas programme on a CD-rom is compatible with GPS device. The device attached to a laptop can provide the precise location of the vehicle on the screen in relation to the destination.

Presently, the digital map on a compact disk, features over a hundred detailed maps panelled seamlessly to give a view of all densely populated areas of Bangalore.

Binding heavy metals to remove pollutants
To rid the environment of pollutants, Israeli scientists are exploiting the “appetite” of the frail-looking Azolla ferns and water lilies to absorb heavy metals without any detrimental effect to the plants.

Azolla plants have a long life and can absorb copper, cadmium, zinc, chromium and nickel at 500 times their concentration in common effluents.

As the heavy metals bind to the cell walls of the plant, Azolla can be equally effective when dried and pressed, according to the botanists of Hebrew University who discovered this unique characteristic of Azolla.

Biofilters made from Azolla can be “planted” anywhere, especially close to the source of a potential pollutant.

This reduces the amount of effluents that must be treated to a minimum and optimizes the efficiency of the biofilter which can be targeted to treat one kind of metal, instead of a complex “chemical soup” of various compounds in a larger body of water, reports Features from Israel.

Robosubs for better underwater search
Underwater ROVs — remotely operated vehicles — that found John F. Kennedy Jr.’s plane and wreckage from the TWA and Swissair crashes may be replaced by robot submarines in the not-too-distant future.

Navy and civilian researchers are developing small, low-cost autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs, that could be deployed in greater numbers to search larger areas of ocean bottom and do it faster than ROVs. They could also be used to hunt for mines, map oceans and other tasks.

ROVs must be tethered to ships, which supply power and human control. The new robosubs would operate with their own battery power and get their guidance from onboard computers and sensing devices.

“Once it leaves the dock, there’s no more interaction,” said Daryl Davidson, executive director of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a trade group based in Washington.

“If you want to use the JFK scenario, instead of having a couple of ships for towing ROVs or towing sonars, you could have one ship that could dump numerous autonomous underwater systems, and they could track their own preprogrammed missions,” Davidson said. Aircraft even could drop the small subs by parachute.

The Navy is primarily interested in AUVs to hunt for sea mines and obstacles. The autonomous subs could do the job.