Facebook’s challenge
“Team Diaspora” in a video shot in a classroom, outlined its utopian vision of social networking: you remain in control of all your data. Can they take on the social networking giant, asks Rhodri Marsden 
I just tried to make a list of the things that Facebook knows about me. I started with mundane stuff that anyone reading the printed version of this unwilling sufferer of male-pattern baldness. It knows I’m currently obsessed with a band called Everything Everything, because I persist in sharing their videos on Facebook despite one friend thinking that they represent some kind of punk rock betrayal

Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg faces many challenges, he doesn’t seem to be too worried.

Prof Yash Pal

Trends
Wheat genome work just at initial stage
BEIJING: Efforts to sequence the wheat genome are only at an initial stage of what will be a long-term project requiring more government support, leading Chinese and international scientists said on Tuesday. British researchers last week released the first version of the wheat genome, a step toward a fully analysed map that should help wheat breeders develop high-yielding varieties that are more resistant to drought or disease.

This picture received from the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technologym shows a member of the Japanese research team demonstrating world’s first 3D televistion system that allows users to touch, pinch or poke images seeming to float in front of them in Tsukuba. The technology changes the shape of three-dimensional images in response to “touches”, aided by cameras that monitor how the fingers move. It is not known when the technology will be put to practical use but its creators see it being used to simulate surgical operations and in video game software allowing players to experience the sensation of holding weapons or sports equipment. —AFP photograph

Facebook’s challenge
“Team Diaspora” in a video shot in a classroom, outlined its utopian vision of social networking: you remain in control of all your data. Can they take on the social networking giant, asks Rhodri Marsden 

I just tried to make a list of the things that Facebook knows about me. I started with mundane stuff that anyone reading the printed version of this unwilling sufferer of male-pattern baldness. It knows I’m currently obsessed with a band called Everything Everything, because I persist in sharing their videos on Facebook despite one friend thinking that they represent some kind of punk rock betrayal.

It knows where I was on Friday, because I mentioned it, and it knew where I was going to be last Tuesday about two weeks in advance. It also knows the precise pattern of the ebbs and flows of my real-life crushes, because I click through to those people’s pages more often than others and comment casually on things they’ve said or done. Basically, it knows more about my day-to-day life than an overprotective mother - which mine isn’t, I hasten to add.

We occasionally have these surges of realisation; the last collective one was back in May, when Facebook once again made “simplifying” alterations to its privacy settings that were actually as confusing as British train ticket pricing policy. The moment was seized upon by four New York college kids who, referring to themselves as “Team Diaspora” in a video shot in a classroom, outlined their utopian vision of social networking: you remain in control of all your data, you own it and look after it, share whatever you like with whoever you like, and at no point hand it over to a central hub that can log that information. They aimed to raise $10,000 to complete Diaspora as a summer project, but timed their announcement to such perfection that $200,000 came rolling in - including, strangely, a donation from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who described it as a “cool idea”. Now, all eyes are on these unassuming individuals as they prepare, in the next few days, to release the initial code for what’s seen as the driving force of “antisocial networking”.

“Facebook killer” is a headline-grabbing phrase, but the chances of Diaspora becoming anything more than a prompt for further discussion of privacy issues seem slim. Firstly, there’s a limit to what four young men with no track record can achieve in the first three months out of university. (I wouldn’t for a moment offer myself up as a benchmark, but over a similar period in 1992 I mainly sat in a van and got drunk.) But more importantly, Facebook feels unassailable. It’s colossal. It has made it easy and free to establish and maintain social connections; Diaspora, by contrast, will require us to find a chunk of webspace to install it, and maintain it once we have. Can we be bothered? Many Facebook users understand that with convenience comes a privacy trade off - in essence, free web hosting in return for spying. Many others don’t know, or simply don’t care. None of these people, who make up the vast majority of Facebook’s users, will use Diaspora. Its user base will be a relative handful of tech-savvy people who are either keen to escape Facebook, or have already.

As one insightful commenter noted, Facebook is only really a problem for those who don’t use it. To prise people away from it will mean a groundswell of people deciding, as law professor Eben Moglen did recently, that Zuckerberg has “done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age”. But it’s more likely that people are grateful to him for allowing them to play Farmville until 3am, or letting them keep tabs on people they fancy. Casual stalking for the win, as the internet generation might conceivably say.

— By arrangement withThe Independent

Trends
Wheat genome work just at initial stage

BEIJING: Efforts to sequence the wheat genome are only at an initial stage of what will be a long-term project requiring more government support, leading Chinese and international scientists said on Tuesday. British researchers last week released the first version of the wheat genome, a step toward a fully analysed map that should help wheat breeders develop high-yielding varieties that are more resistant to drought or disease.

Genetic link to common migraine found

LONDON: An international scientific team has identified for the first time a genetic risk factor associated with common migraines and say their research could open the way for new treatments to prevent migraine attacks. Researchers who looked at genetic data from 50,000 people from Finland, Germany and The Netherlands found that patients with a certain DNA variant affecting regulation of a particular brain chemical have a greater risk of developing migraines.

U.N. climate panel urged to reform

UNITED NATIONS: The U.N. climate panel should make predictions only when it has solid evidence and should avoid policy advocacy, scientists said in a report on Monday that called for thorough reform of the body. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was widely criticized after admitting its 2007 global warming report wrongly said Himalayan glaciers would vanish by 2035 and that it overstated how much of the Netherlands is below sea level. — Reuters

This universe

Why does a wire produce ‘whispering’ sound when it is moved at a high speed in air?

When the wire is moved at a high speed through air, it faces resistance. The resistance force can set the wire vibrating that produces sound. The frequency is low and non-uniform. You might call it a ‘whispering’ sound, depending on how romantic you are. At a very high speed, you might also call it whistling.

I have read that gravitation force acts on two bodies due to exchange of particles called as gravitons. Why don’t we experience exchange of particles from our body with the ground when we fall down?

I can understand that it is difficult to understand the concept of exchange forces. This concept is also used in trying to understand the electrostatic force where the exchanged quanta are supposed to be photons. Such forces are also responsible for all of chemistry and biology. We do not feel our body cells being bombarded by ping pong like balls or grains of sand. But let us shift gears and try to understand why scientists had to invent the idea of exchange forces.

Just consider the gravitational force between the Earth and the Sun. each particle on these two bodies is exchanging gravitons. You and the earth also do the same. Like the photons, the gravity quanta also have a zero mass. The effect of the Sun on the Earth is not instantaneous, because gravitons cannot travel at velocities greater than that of light. What happens between your body and the Earth is qualitatively similar. The gravitons are almost infinite in number and we do not have the sensitivity or the time resolution capability to detect individual quanta of gravity.

I have already mentioned the electromagnetic forces that determine the chemical and biological universes. This is also true of strong interactions and weak interactions. The exchanged quanta in each of these cases are different and have specific properties. For example the quanta for strong interaction are rather massive and therefore the range of interactions is also short. I hope I have been able to give you a rough idea about exchange forces. 

Prof Yash Pal