Why we need self driving cars

After being enlightened about Google’s new self-driving electric car, I spent my whole afternoon cheating on FIFA whilst reading about this god-sent technology.

Instead of a steering wheel and pedals this battery-powered electric vehicle has as a stop-go button. These novel prototypes have a plastic build for the most part. But they have limited speed as a battery/electric propulsion system restricts the maximum speed to about 40kph (25 mph). Google has planned to manufacture around 200 of these extremely cute, mostly-plastic cars over the next year, albeit restricting road testing to California for the next couple of years.

Well, now without any further ado, allow me to tell you why we need self-driving cars:

1.      1.First and foremost, we humans are flawed beings! We snooze, we text, we eat behind the wheel. Not to mention drunk imbeciles revolting against speed limits and traffic rules! Road accidents have become such a primary cause of death in our country that probably even the “Grim Reaper” is begging for mercy. More than 100,000 deaths due car accidents and there are dimwits who’ve still failed to learn.

2.We need these cars to take over roads soon for there is definitely a plentitude from our flawed race who’ll follow suit!

2.      Now, questions like “how much will these cars cost?” will arise. But instead of thinking superficially, we should delve deeper and look at the fact that there’s a plethora of disabled people in the world who work. We can’t ignore how this technology could transform the lives of the elderly or the disabled.

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3.      3.The cars use a mixture of 3D laser-mapping, GPS, and radar to analyze and interpret their surroundings. The radar is interesting as it allows the car to see through objects, instead of relying on line-of-sight. As of now they can’t process a variety of complex situations. But, Google is hoping that with significant development, eventually the cars will be able to handle all of this as well (or better) than a human can.

4.      4.These cars are adorable!

If you take other EVs into consideration like the Tesla Model S or the Toyota Prius, they have a more aggressive and demeaning stance. And the most intriguing thing is that these cars were designed to look so endearing. Why so? Well, the answer to that is human psychology.  Our brains are hardwired to treat inanimate or animate objects with utmost care, caution and reverence if they resemble living things because our moral compasses would snap into place

5.      

      5.There’ll definitely be myriad skeptics who’ll think how autonomous vehicles could take over the highway. But what they need to understand is that a robot is differentiating cars from pedestrians. Millions of photons are being fired from a laser and interpreting, processing, and reacting to the hand signals of a biker, while doing so. We need to understand that instead of an organic brain which has had millions of years to evolve and yet fumbles at intersections, an artificial brain which was born less than a decade will be our chauffer. And it obviously needs to evolve.

      So why don’t we ignore some temporary shortcomings and thank Google for trying to eliminate human error from a chore which has been entirely controlled by humans for decades.

Let’s embrace innovation and get ready for a revolution in transportation.

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When Poop became Water

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.With this philosophy, Bill Gates, the philanthropist has taken up the task to end the misery of billions of people when it comes to clean drinking water. But how does he do it and that too in the cheapest way possible? BY TURNING POOP INTO WATER!

Janicki Omniprocessor, developed by Peter Janicki, CEO of Janicki Bioenergy and funded by the Gates Foundation, turns sewer sludge into electricity, clean drinking water and ash. Seems the perfect solution for places where we open the tap and what comes out of it (the water) is worse than what we get from the roof when it’s raining. Bill Gates states, “At least 2 billion use latrines that aren’t properly drained. Others simply defecate in the open. The waste contaminates drinking water for millions of people and has horrific consequences. Diseases caused by poor sanitation kill around 700,000 children every year and prevent many more from fully developing both mentally and physically”. If we can develop safe, clean and affordable sanitation and waste management techniques, we can prevent many deaths and help in promoting a healthy lifestyle. One idea, as Gates suggested, is to reinvent the toilet where human waste will be destroyed or converted into a valuable resource such as fuel or fertilizer.

                                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVzppWSIFU0

Another way is to reinvent the sewage treatment plant. With this vision of Bill, Janicki Bioenergy designed and built the Janicki Omniprocessor. Firstly, the machine is fed with sewer sludge which is boiled at a high temperature of approximately 1000 degree Celsius inside a large tube called the dryer. Here, in the boiling process, the water vapour is separated from the solids. The dried solids are then fed into the fire which can develop high pressure, high temperature steam. Steam, when taken into the steam engine drives the generator which in turn creates electricity. The electricity, apart from being used to run the Omniprocessor, can also be supplied to the community. Now the water vapour created in the boiling process is run through the cleaning system that uses a cyclone and several filters to remove harmful particles. Further condensation leads to clean drinking water. “The water tasted as good as I’ve had out of a bottle.” Gates continued. “And having studied the engineering behind it, I would happily drink it every day. It’s that safe."

One Omniprocessor is designed to continually provide water for upto 100,000 people. Local entrepreneurs will run the processors, collecting sludge to produce the water and energy. The first machine will be tested in Dakar, Senegal. Gates Foundation is working towards the goal to make the processors cheap enough that entrepreneurs in low and middle income countries will want to invest in them and start profitable waste-treatment. India is being seen as a great prospect to install the Omniprocessor where lots of entrepreneurs would own and operate the processors, as well as the companies with the skill to manufacture many parts.

The whole business model associated with it opens up various doors and opportunities. “Now, waste would turn into a commodity with its real value in the marketplace”, states Gates. In places where fresh water is hard to come by, water from poop is the way ahead.

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The wonder material

Curiosity driven research-that’s what led to the inception of the wonder material on a serendipitous evening in 2002, when Dr. Andre Geim was pondering about Carbon. He contemplated about how ultra thin layers of Carbon might behave under experimental conditions. Unequivocally, Graphite was the most favorable material to work with, but the general fashion to isolate extremely thin layers would overheat the material, ultimately destroying it. Geim’s “scotch-tape” technique would go on to become renowned for isolating the world’s two dimensional material: a layer of carbon only an atom thick which under an atomic microscope, resembled a flat lattice of hexagons linked in a honeycomb pattern. This was the birth of Graphene.

Soon after, Dr. Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov started tinkering with Graphene. Over the next couple of years, a series of experiments revealed some stupefying properties of the material. Its unique structure lets electrons flow unfettered through the lattice at phenomenal speeds. They found out that Graphene would be able to conduct 1000 times more electricity that Copper.  The elfin material also exhibited field effect (the response that some materials show when placed near an electric field, which allows scientists to control the conductivity. Field effect-one of the defining characteristics of silicon, used in computer chips). This hinted that Graphene could substitute Silicon in the future.

In October, 2004, their paper, “Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films,” was published in Science, and it astonished scientists. Youngjoon Gil, the executive vice-president of the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology stated: “It was as if science fiction had become reality.” Six years later in 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.

 James Tour, a research worker at Rice University stated that “mobility” with which electronic information can flow across graphene’s surface is the most tantalizing of Graphene’s properties described in Geim and Novoselov’s paper. “The slow step in our computers is moving information from point A to point B,” Tour said. “Now you’ve taken the slow step, the biggest hurdle in silicon electronics, and you’ve introduced a new material and—boom! All of a sudden, you’re increasing speed not by a factor of ten but by a factor of a hundred, possibly even more.” This has given the much needed boost to the semiconductor industry which has been slogging to keep up with Moore’s law devised by Gordon Moore (Co-founder of Intel). He predicted that every two years the density and effectiveness of computer chips would double. Engineers have been able to keep up with Moore’s law for five decades. But there’s a limit. Shrinking the chip too much, would move its transistors too close together, and silicon stops working. Soon, silicon chips may no longer be able to keep pace with Moore’s Law. Graphene, could offer a solution.

But it’s not just the computer and electronics industry that will be beneficiaries of a possible Graphene revolution.

Tour has sold patents for a graphene-infused paint whose conductivity may abet in removing ice from helicopter blades, fluids to improve efficiency of oil drills, and graphene-based materials to make the inflatable slides and life rafts used in airplanes. He pointed out that it is the only substance on the earth which is entirely impermeable to gas and it barely weighs anything. Lighter rafts and slides would help airline companies save millions of dollars a year on fuel.

A certain Graphene-based gel is being experimented with as a scaffold for spinal-cord injuries. Instead of just having a nonfunctional scaffold material, having something that’s electrically conductive helps the nerve cells to communicate electrically and connect with each other. This has been successfully tested on lab rats whose hind legs had been paralyzed. Bionic devices that allow paraplegics to reuse their limbs may not be science fiction for too long.

When oxygen and hydrogen molecules were bonded to Graphene, Graphene oxide came into existence-something which may solve our problems of radioactive waste disposal, as Graphene Oxide binds with the radioactive materials, forming a sludge that can be scooped away without much ado.

Scientists at MIT are developing a graphene filter covered with holes so tiny that they will only allow water to pass and will keep the salt out. Desalinization of salt water may have never been so simple had it not been for Graphene.

In Marvel Comics' Superior Ironman #2, the armored avenger-Tony Stark adorned an all-white armour instead of the familiar red and gold. Significantly, this new Ironman suit has no faceplate. 

Well, not exactly. As it is only one atom thick, graphene passes 97% of visible light, making it more transparent than most glasses, so we can indeed see his face through this thin, carbon "faceplate."

And maybe, just maybe, we may see our armies wearing these rather attractive suits made of Graphene. But could it be effective in protecting our soldiers? Experiments have proved that thin multi-layers of graphene, no more than a hundred atoms thick, are indeed ten times more "bullet-proof" than steel.

Wow. One material with myriad applications and I have barely been able to write about anything.

Adjectives that can be used for Graphene: elfin, wondrous, sublime, stupendous.... I could probably go on forever.

Graphene may soon spell the beginning of another technological and industrial revolution. Well, the future looks bright for all of us and especially for those who slavishly devote themselves to technology.

So, let us all bask in the glory of “THE WONDER MATERIAL”.

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The Internet of Things: Key to a techno centric community

The first time I heard the term ‘The Internet of Things’ (IoT), I thought I had made a mistake and somehow missed out a portion of a sentence that talked about the internet and an unrelated thing. It turned out to be a good thing though, as the term stayed in my head till I could find a way to figure it out.

It is important to understand what IoT is all about. Considering how vast its scope is, everyone can look at it differently. Kevin Ashton, Cofounder and Executive Director of the Auto-ID Center at MIT, first mentioned the Internet of Things in a presentation he made to Procter & Gamble. He has explained the concept and potential of IoT in a very simple, effective way:

“Today computers -- and, therefore, the Internet -- are almost wholly dependent on human beings for information. Nearly all of the roughly 50 petabytes (a petabyte is 1,024 terabytes) of data available on the Internet were first captured and created by human beings by typing, pressing a record button, taking a digital picture or scanning a bar code.

The problem is, people have limited time, attention and accuracy -- all of which means they are not very good at capturing data about things in the real world. If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things -- using data they gathered without any help from us -- we would be able to track and count everything and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling and whether they were fresh or past their best.”

For IoT to function, everything (animals, people, appliances etc.) has to be provided with a unique identifier and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. IPv4 is the Internet Protocol that is used to route most of the traffic on the Internet. The IPv4 address field is a 32 bit field and that brings with it a certain set of limitations. There are nearly 4.3 billion IP addresses available in this space and they are almost exhausted now. IPv6 was developed in the late 90s by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to address this issue. This scheme has more than 7.9×10^28 times as many addresses. This would easily tackle the growing demand of Internet connected devices. This enormous increase in address space is an important factor in the development of the Internet of Things. According to Steve Leibson, who identifies himself as “occasional docent at the Computer History Museum,” the address space expansion means that we could “assign an IPV6 address to every atom on the surface of the earth, and still have enough addresses left to do another 100+ earths.” In other words, humans could easily assign an IP address to every "thing" on the planet.

It is evident that the Internet of Things is a very complex and large scale process. The lack of address space is just one issue which has been resolved. Security and privacy issues along with the methods of indexing and storing humongous amounts of data need to be tackled.

Nonetheless, the implication is clear. We are heading towards a world where your environment knows you as much as you know it. Home automation, Google cabs that know your urgent appointments and a grocery store that knows your fridge is out of milk are not out of a fiction novel anymore. They are out there in the world you and I live in. The next wave of technological revolution is just around the corner and we are lucky to be a part of it. The Internet of Things will play a key role in paving the way to achieving a perfect environment. We, as a techno centric community, shall realize our goals through the path lit up bright and clear by the Internet of Things!

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Hues of a Technocentric Community

There’s a reason that those with orthodox inclinations have fallen far behind the liberals or the ‘Techno Centric’ on the technology front. We read Wired or Digit or any gadget blog and note how definitively liberal the publications are—pro-science, pro-progress and pro-net neutrality.

We are not primitive anymore, we are not confined to ‘just us’ anymore. We have become aware of the environment, we are wary of the mistakes that our ancestors have made. We know about the Global Climatic Shift (Science stuff), and we read upon Stem Cell Research (more of that science stuff). We are a new breed of technical euphoria; we are not the ones who sit in their shells, oblivious to the happenings of the outer world.

We have become better; we have adapted to the environment and adapted the environment to ourselves at the same time. We spiritedly dream about new technologies and make efforts to accentuate these dreams. We have turned to solar energy rather than the conventional forms of energy. We prefer walking over driving. We adapt to the Global Positioning System and make it better with crowd sourced information. We make our own ways, and our avenues of fun are not limited to interference but extend to perseverance and consistency.

We work to make our surroundings better, to make our neighborhoods better. We make correct political decisions, we are a part of the world family. Every information sparks a shard of brilliance in our minds. We are not dull, we are not static. Instead we have become volatile and all for the right reasons.

We work for a better future; we take a tip of the brink and turn it into wonders. We have become much more than we used to be.

We have become more efficient, we have become precariously more arduous to a common cause. We use the technicalities and its red flags carefully to expedite the meaningful and attenuate the noise. We have cut on the incessant chatter, and made it better for the information flow. We process ready data rather than raw. We are making headways in every field we pry.

We are a global family.

We are a part of the Techno-Centric Community.

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On an epic journey of Science: Interstellar 1

Whether you actually agree with the science or not, Interstellar is generally considered a masterpiece. A visual treat with truly great acting and story. But that is not all Interstellar is. The visual treatment of the blackhole isn’t made out of pure imagination, though the depiction is unlike anything ever seen. The truth is it’s due to interstellar, this visual form of Interstellar was discovered. The movie actually lended itself in making of two research papers by Caltech physicist Kip Thorne one for the astrophysicist community and one for the computer graphics community, who worked as a scientific consultant for the film. I will divide this into two parts – one explaining the science used in wormholes, and the other in the blackhole.

Let’s begin with the wormhole used in the movie for interstellar travel. Before Interstellar, any and all movies depicted a wormhole as a flat circular hole in space. But under the supervision on Kip Thorne, Christopher Nolan seeked to correct that. It has always been theorized that a wormhole is a spherical hole in space-time. It is because the three dimensional universe of ours is connected by extending a singularity on both sides through the fourth dimensional space called bulk, thus any tear connecting two points in our universe have to be a spherical hole. Let’s understand this by simple graphics, of course it is impossible to represent a four dimensional space here so this graphic would use a simple trick of collapsing a dimension like we do in our eg sheets.

To understand how two singularities connect two points in space time, we must first understand how a singularity works. According to Einstein at a point in space, the presence of mass means presence of gravity. Gravity effects the local space time of its surrounding region. So when infinite density is present a point it extends the local space into the bulk, as if it were made of rubber sheet giving it a cone like projection with the tip being the singularity where the gravity and mass become infinite and time almost doesn’t exist. Such infinite mass is achieved naturally in the universe when a star collapses into itself where its mass gets concentrated in almost negligible volume, giving it almost infinite density. Let’s understand this now.

If the universal plane was considered folded, and the two singularities were extended into each other, they will form a tunnel through bulk and a shortcut through space time will be created and anyone in the plane can fall through one opening of the tunnel to reach the other end quickly. So this can be viewed as this.

Now we were understanding the model of a wormhole with one dimension collapsed with our universe visualized as 2D plane, and the opening mouth of the wormhole as a circular flat hole. But since the universe is actually three-dimensional, the opening of the wormhole would also be three dimensional and would be a spherical hole in the space. Exactly as depicted by Interstellar.

For the computer graphics team behind Interstellar, this proved to be a problem, to depict a spherical hole out of pure imagination, so the visual effects supervisor of the Interstellar team asked for help from Kip Thorne not wanting to compromise the accuracy of depiction of the phenomenon in the film, who provided him with general equations which would help the team trace behavior of light rays around a wormhole.

The first thing they made out was that light wouldn’t behave classically around a wormhole, which is it won’t travel in a straight line. Any of the rendering software available at the time wasn’t able to do so, so the CGI team had to write a completely new renderer which would be able to do so based on the equations provided by Thorne, and then rendered the wormhole. The result turned out to be nothing like what anyone could visualize. The wormhole was like a crystal ball reflecting the universe, a spherical hole in spacetime. The reflection of space if the wormhole was viewed in person would be of the space at the other end of the wormhole. This is the most accurate depiction of wormhole ever and gave new insights into the phenomenon to Kip Thorne who helped design it.

The wormhole depicted in the film is 2.5 miles in diameter and connects two points in space nearly ten billion light years apart. The most interesting part is that it accurately said to be placed there by someone, i.e. it’s not a natural phenomenon because such a merger of two singularities in the bulk is not possible without some external force which is in this case humans from far future and this information is neatly integrated into the story.

I’ll explain the same beautiful and accurate science behind the science of the blackhole Gargantua and the relative passage of time depicted in the movie in the next part. Till then watch this space for other great articles. 

Credits:
The Science of Interstellar - Kip Thorne.
Wrinkles in Space Time, The Warped astrophysics of Interstellar – Adam Rogers [Wired.com]
The Science of ‘Interstellar’ Explained – [Space.com]

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