The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

A Manhattan project for the 21st century

Dr Steven Cutts explores the outermost frontiers of knowledge to which science and technology have carried us, and probes where current breakthroughs could lead.

Almost 70 years ago, several groups of scientists and engineers came together to discuss the most terrifying technological development then envisaged: the atom bomb. Incredibly, physicists had been able to predict atomic weapons from purely pen and paper calculations.

A group of leading scientists was gathered at a remote laboratory in New Mexico to work on a project so secret even their wives were not allowed to know its purpose: to develop a weapon capable of destroying a city the size of Manhattan.

Achieving the aim cost 10 times its originally estimated budget, but in purely? military terms the Manhattan Project was a spectacular success, bringing World War II to an abrupt end by cruelly obliterating Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

That awesome event led to a flurry of further breakthroughs in both civil and military applications of nuclear power and rocket science.

In July 1969 Neil Armstrong was actually walking on the Moon and some of us felt then that almost any technological challenge could be met if only enough resources were committed to it. That is simply not the case.

Nuclear mirage

One of the few holy grails of scientific research is nuclear power. The promise of limitless electrical power from nuclear fusion has excited governments since the 1950s, yet despite fortunes being spent globally on research, the best fusion reactor still consumes more energy than it produces.

Not a single megawatt of energy has made it into any country’s national grid and nuclear fusion remains a mirage that recedes as fast as we approach it.

It is likely that a viable fusion reactor will be built within the next 30 years, but by that time breakthroughs in alternative technology may have left it behind,

The solar power technology of spaceflight has already arrived on earth and the only thing holding it back is mass production. If it becomes possible to coat the roof of your house dirt-cheaply with photovoltaic cells, will you bother to hook up to the mains?

Part of the problem with scientific research is that it pays off only at certain moments. To obtain a worthwhile return on our investment we need to do more than just recognise a good idea.

We have to identify an idea whose time has come. Sometimes the timing of scientific discovery is happily accidental. The Aids epidemic has emerged as a serious threat to mankind and the timing of its advent remains a mystery.

Had it arrived half a century earlier we would have had practically no hope of understanding its mechanism, let alone of producing drugs to control its development.

Weaned on the novels of Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov, I was convinced in my youth that almost any technological challenge could be met.

Then it seemed to me inevitable that by the early 21st century much of our transport system would have become redundant because so many office workers would be telecommuting from computers at home.

Why on earth would anybody wish to suffer rush-hour delays and discomfort when they could enjoy an extra couple of hours in bed?

That revolution in working practice hasn’t happened and as an adult I realise that my youthful prognostication was naive. Human beings need social contact, a competitive environment and a continuous change of scene.

If the internet does leave Western offices empty it will be because the jobs have shifted to low-cost areas of Asia, and the people I had envisaged sitting at their home computers will be largely unemployed.

Nevertheless, the process of scientific change continues unabated and forever accelerates.

The sum total of medical research papers in the world is increasing exponentially — a problem in itself, since the majority of them are not wOl1h reading.

But as more and more countries industrialise and as ever more resources are pumped into medical and engineering research, inevitably breakthroughs will follow.

Scientists are researching into immunology, cancer and stem-cell fields unheard of only 20 years ago. A new generation of engineers is striving to provide us with fresh sources of power.

A host of advances in Space travel are on the edge of breaching present financial and technical obstacles. With all this effort and will, obstacles previously insurmountable will surely soon be overcome.

The fact is that some scientific and technological developments are simply of their time and not the result of an enforced effort. — AF

Mobile phone and depression
V Kumara Swamy

Concerns expressed on possible effects of mobile phones on humans have been dismissed by people involved in the business, but a recent research suggests that the electromagnetic “smog” from mobile phones and electronic goods could be playing a role in aiding depression.

In a study done in Australia pertaining to the period between 1968 and 2002, the researchers came to the conclusion that the suicide rates increased during geomagnetic storms, triggered by solar flares during these years.

“The sample was huge, involving 51,845 males and 16,327 females between 1968 and 2002. It would be useful to replicate this again; we did a previous study and found similar results. This suggests that electromagnetic radiation does affect behaviour,” says Prof Michael Berk, Department of Clinical and Biomedical Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia.

The study by Prof Berk came in support of the hypothesis that mood, and indeed suicidality, can be influenced by disturbances in the electromagnetic field in our environment and may have an adverse impact on mental health.

Man-made disturbances in the electromagnetic field are those caused by the power distribution grid and electrical devices. It is here that the day to day devices like microwave ovens and mobile devices that emit magnetic fields come into the picture.

According to Prof Berk, two previous, but less comprehensive studies had also shown a positive relationship between geomagnetic storm activity and an increased incidence of suicide.

Blood pressure was shown to increase significantly for males and females when there was an increase in geomagnetic activity.A positive trend was also noticed between geomagnetic activity and subjective psycho-physiological complaints.

On the connection between mobile phones and depression, doctors are sceptical. “Depression is a psychiatric disorder and I am sure in 99 per cent case, it is the case. This is not seasonal as the study suggests,” says Dr Samir Parikh, a Consultant Psychiatrist here. “Magnetic field exposure is not a sufficient cause of depression or suicide,” he says.

“Moreover, electromagnetic radiation is not always dangerous. Extremely high frequencies of electromagnetic waves (EHF-therapy) are used by doctors to treat various forms of depression in the western countries,” says Dr Parikh.

“We cannot be sure what mobiles phones etc do and their effects may differ. This suggests at least that we should look,” says Prof Berk.

In another study done this year on the impact of standard mobile exposure on 18 children 10-12 years of age, it was noticed that there was a tendency for reaction time to be shorter during exposure to microwave radiation. Further, the scientist involved in the study were of the opinion that effects of radiation from a GSM handset could be different from a analogue handset.

So what do the studies done so far on mobile devices’ effects say? They are inconclusive and that’s the way the mobile manufacturers would like to see them. — PTI

Trends
Solar-powered purse

Joe Hynek may get some guff for carrying a purse, but he says it’s all in the name of science: He has designed a solar handbag that can power small electronic devices like cell phones.

Hynek, 27, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering at Iowa State University, designed the Solarjo Power Purse during a handbag competition in an experimental garment design class.

The black, rectangular purse is covered with laminated solar panels, which resemble a very thin camera film separated by white lines. Clear plastic handles top the handbag.

Wonder pill for women

After the success of the “wonder pill” Viagra for men, scientists are now working on drug molecules to improve sexual desire of women, with one such experimental pill already undergoing Phase II clinical studies in some countries, a scientist involved in the work said here today.

“We are working on three different drug molecules,” Dr Peter Ellis, Executive Director at the Global Research and Development of the drug company Pfizer Limited, has said. — PTI

What you’ll think of next

To recall memories, your brain travels back in time via the ultimate Google search, according to a new study in which scientists found they can monitor the activity and actually predict what you’ll think of next.

The work bolsters the validity of a longstanding hypothesis that the human brain takes itself back to the state it was in when a memory was first formed.

The psychologist Endel Tulving dubbed this process “mental time travel.”

Researchers analysed brain scans of people as the test subjects watched pictures on a computer screen. The images were divided into three categories: celebrities like Jack Nicholson and Halle Berry, places like the Taj Mahal and the Grand Canyon, and everyday objects like tweezers and a pocket mirror.

To make sure the subjects were paying attention, they were asked a question about each image as it came up, like whether they liked a certain celebrity, how much they wanted to visit a certain place or how often they used a certain object.

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THIS UNIVERSE
PROF YASH PAL

I have noticed that when I ride an escalator the handrail moves at different speed than the stairs. We would expect it to move at the same speed but it never does. Why not?

I have never examined the exact layout of an escalator, but we can still examine some constraints and advantages of what you have observed. It is clear that the stair assembly and the rail sheath must both move two continuous non-intersecting rings - not round rings but nevertheless closed rings. It is easy to realise that the lengths of these two rings would be different because even if they are close to each other in the portion that we do not see, in the portion of the staircase where we ride, the rail sheath is higher. If these two rings share some motor mechanism, the rail sheath, being a little longer, would tend to lag behind a little. This is not such an inconvenience, because the surface of the sheath is smooth and its slow slide under our hand is barely noticed. It might be even useful because it keeps us alert. Remember that what moves is the rail sheath and not the railing itself. You or an engineer familiar with the setup can check this answer, based only on generalities.

Why is there no fire in the absence of oxygen?

Fire is the result of a chemical reaction in which energy is released. In our world, there are many combustible substances such as wood, coal, oil etc. A combustible substance is considered so because, in reaction with oxygen, it produces other compounds along with a lot of energy.

Fortunately, for most of these substances the reaction is extremely slow or does not start unless the temperature is raised above a specific threshold. Once the reaction is initiated, the temperature stays above the threshold and a raging fire can result. Even a child knows that a threshold temperature is required, because we always have to “light” a fire, be it a candle, the kitchen stove, a bundle of straw or a Diwali cracker. But your question remains - “Why only oxygen”?

There are many chemical reactions in which energy is released. All of them do not produce fire. They may produce heat and even light but fire, as we know it, is not a universal manifestation of such reactions. This is also true for nuclear reactions. A nuclear reactor produces a lot of energy. Tremendous heat is generated, temperature is very high but there are no flames. Flames of common fires are produced when gases react exothermally, there is convection due to heating and supply of gases is maintained from below. Their brightness is produced by the incompletely burnt, but incandescent, particles of materials such as carbon, wafted up by the rising hot gases. Carbon and oil containing materials are abundant on earth.

Oxygen is also available everywhere. A rise in temperature beyond a threshold therefore leads to a fire. Incidentally, we should realise that fire flames would not be seen in the way they are if there were no convection (for example in the micro-gravity environment of a satellite in orbit). Nitrogen is the other abundant gas in the atmosphere. But the chemical structure of nitrogen is such that no exothermic reactions with these fuel elements are possible.