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| SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY |
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Pluto dethroned World trying to bridge the digital divide Trends
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Pluto dethroned The world body of professional astronomers decided at Prague, on August 24, by an overwhelming vote, to remove Pluto from the category of planets. There are now officially only eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. (Let us have a competition to design a new mnemonic.) Tentatively, Pluto has been dubbed a “Dwarf Planet”. While taking up the vexing question of defining a planet astronomers were acutely conscious of the fact that though their task was a professional one, it obviously had a public dimension. Assigning names and categories to some far-off celestial body is one thing, tampering with school textbooks and encyclopaedias quite another. While most astronomers agreed that the term planet need be restrictively used (for almost round heliocentric bodies that have cleared their orbit), an acceptable name for Pluto-like objects was not forthcoming. While like most others I had no objection to Pluto’s being de-planetised, I could not help pointing out in the pre-poll discussion that the term Dwarf Planet was grammatically unsound. A Dwarf Planet is still a planet. What we need is a new term without any past baggage. This was the expression of a general sentiment. That is why inverted commas have been placed around the term (not that you can pronounce them) denoting the hope that a better name will emerge in course of time. Also, it may be noted that the adjective dwarf is a misnomer. Pluto’s disqualification stems not from its size but from its orbit. Even at the time Pluto was discovered (1930), it was known that it was dynamically an oddity, because its orbit intersected that of Neptune. But since it was the only object beyond Neptune, it was not possible to place it in any context. But now, thanks to advances in astronomical technology, we already have another object beyond Pluto; it is technically called 20003UB313 and has been nicknamed Xena. There are many others, farther away, waiting to be counted. It has now become possible to categorise Pluto. The fact that we are officially using imprecise terms like Dwarf Planet and Trans-Neptunian Objects shows that there is confusion in abundance. But this is nothing to be ashamed of, although the International Astronomical Union, officially assigned the task of managing celestial affairs, could have handled the whole affair better, by applying its mind more diligently and coming up with more precise definition and terminology. The confusion, however, is a welcome development. There was a long-standing classical plateau in our planetary knowledge when the naked-eye planets, that is the ones up to Saturn, alone were known. Another plateau was reached with the discovery of Pluto. Our present uncertainties about solar system membership arise because we are in the midst of growing knowledge. Once a new plateau is reached, we shall be able to make a neat arrangement, which will last till yet another new breakthrough muddies the waters once again. This is scientific progress, because each confusion is more sophisticated than the previous one. It goes to the credit of the scientists that they recognise confusion and try to remove it, all by themselves. In the meantime, for those participating in quiz programmes, the answer to the question: How many planets does the Sun have?, the answer is eight. But if you are a school student , check with the Board before giving the correct
answer. The author, a former Director of NISTADS, attended the IAU meeting at Prague on August 24. |
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World trying to bridge the digital divide Like the economic divide between the nations and societies, the digital divide has become a grim reality of the contemporary world. It is widely assumed that strides in communications and information technology (IT) have gone to divide the society into digital haves and digital have-nots. However, across the world vigorous and multi-dimensional endeavours are on to narrow the digital divide. In fact, a recent ranking of the web savy nations shows that the digital divide is narrowing down as citizens in emerging nations get online via computers and mobile phones with some regions in the developing world now being on a par with the developing nations. “The apparent narrowing of the digital divide is encouraging”, says a study published by the computer and IT giant IBM and the intelligence unit of the prestigious British publication The Economist. “This is particularly evident in basic connectivity. The emerging markets are providing the vast majority of the world’s new phones and internet connections”, observes this path breaking study. Regions such as Shanghai in China and Bangalore in India have almost the same level of internet links and mobile phone connections as developed nations, says Peter Korsten, European Director of IBM’s Institute of Business Values. “This is the first time we see a level playing field between the developing world and developed world”, observed he. Meanwhile, India’s ambitious national e-governance action plan (NeGAP) unveiled by the Ministry of Information Technology seeks to make digital divide a thing of the past by taking communications and computer technology to the doorstep of over 70% Indians living in rural areas. This project involving an outlay of Rs 60,000-million seeks to set up more than 1,00,000 multipurpose kiosks by December 2007. Named e-Bharat, this mammoth project is considered one of the most ambitious and aggressive programmes conceived and launched anywhere in the world to bridge the digital divide. The kiosk being set up as part of this project will serve as a single window agency for a variety of community services including e-training, e-education, telemedicine, e-commerce and e-entitlements. “It will truly connect our villages. It is going to change the face of rural India”, says an official connected with this project that would see the participation by private and government agencies as well as NGOs, industries and educational institutions in a big way. Thanks to the success of project Origami spearheaded by Microsoft, a low price ultra compact computer running windows XP with touch screen and wireless connectivity would soon become available to the users in the Third World. Except for the keyboard it has everything that a conventional computer sports. It has a 17.8 cm touch sensitive screen that responds to a stylus or the tap of fingers. Newly developed software called windows touchpack will make the touch screen function without any hassles. Origami features Bluetooth ad Wi-Fi wireless access. |
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Trends International scientists will recreate the immediate aftermath of the “Big Bang”, In a bid to uncover the mysteries of the universe, a world physics summit has announced. The laboratory experiment will take place in Europe next year with the collaboration of US, Japanese and Russian Scientists to increase scientific knowledge of dark energy and matter; said summit organiser Carlos Montufar, of Ecuador’s San Francisco University. “The idea is to generate a clash between particles similar to what happened a thousandth of a second after the Big Bang and see what it could tell us about the standard model of matter,” Montufar told AFP.
Video games as medicine
Video games are being treated as serious medicine in the battle against health woes ranging from obesity to cancer and dementia. Several hundred US game developers, medical workers and government policy makers were set to collaborate in Maryland in September at the Games for Health Project devoted to putting video games in the US medicine chest. “We think there is a huge potential for games to be used for good,” said Richard Tate of HopeLab, the company that created Re-Mission game for children being treated for cancer.
— AFP
The beak evolution
Scientists have discovered the reason for a phenomenon that supported Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution — the varied shape of finches beaks — according to a recent issue of the journal nature. When the British naturalist Darwin disembarked on the Pacific archipelago of the Galapagos Islands in 1835, he found 14 separate species of finch, which were distinguishable by a key feature — the shape of their beaks. Although all are descended from a common ancestor, their beaks vary.
— AFP |
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THIS UNIVERSE
This question came to me in Hindi. “Kya paodhon ko, pedhon ko unki jadhon ke baare mein pata hota hai? Manushya ki jadhen kahan hoti hain?” Do plants and trees know about their roots? Where lie the roots of human beings? One does not know what the words jadhen and “roots” imply. Do the words pata hona and “knowing about” mean the same thing and even if they do, what is “knowing”? Is it awareness of existence, conscious or sub-conscious? Is there a hidden assumption in this question that, without such awareness, existence and development would be impossible? Can we have development of organisms without existence of physical roots? Many questions like this arise, but I would cut through deep philosophy and come to some facts. It is true that roots are essential for a tree, to support it, and to carry water and nutrition up from the ground. The roots act in concert with whole tree in both these aspects. But the roots do not produce a tree and its identity. That information is carried in the seed and is shared by all the living cells of the tree. One can grow an entire tree by planting a cutting taken from another tree. One cannot grow a tree by “planting” just the roots. So the answer to your question could be that in some sense, the whole tree “knows” about its roots and vice-a-versa. This “knowing” is not concentrated in a specific location; it is widespread all across the tree. But you might be interested in characteristics and personality of the tree and ask me where those reside. Clearly, that is in the seed that gave birth to the tree and then in the seeds that the tree
itself produces. When we ask about our roots, we are often interested in our genealogy. We could go back several generations, but the ultimate genealogy is hidden in the shadows our distant ancestors, in historical species that could not have had any idea of the direction in which they would evolve. |
