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Foraged Facts
Convenient though the mobile phone and the microwave may seem, it's ill
effect on our body is now a well-known fact. More bad news is yet to come for these users.
New research by University of Warwick physicist Dr Gerard Hyland on the human body's own
electromagnetic radiation, raises a host of new concerns and possibilities as to the
effect of microwave radiation (such as that generated by mobile phones, radar or microwave
ovens) on the human body.
According to Dr Hyland, the human body generate and emit extremely low
intensity radiation in the form of photons (a microscopic packet of light energy), and
that these photon emissions are not random but display coherence (similar to that
possessed by the much more intense light generated by a laser). The origin of this
coherence stems from the body's own metabolism which generates its own coherent
electromagnetic field, which imposes the observed coherence on the emitted photons, the
very weak emission of which can be viewed as an outward sign of an orderly functioning
metabolism. If this is the case then serious questions arise about the effect of external
sources of microwave radiation on living tissue and its own electromagnetic patterns.
For instance, much is known about how external microwaves can have a
heating effect on living tissue and other substances. There are strict regulations and
restrictions on the operation of things that could generate such a heating or
thermal effect - mobile phones and their masts, microwave ovens etc. But few have
considered the possibility that these microwave sources could also have a non-thermal
effect on the bodies own microwave activity. If, by unlucky chance, one of these microwave
pollutants matched one of the key microwave patterns of the human body the resultant
resonance effect may be quite dangerous. If we understood more of how this electromagnetic
activity biosytems operated we could perhaps use external microwaves therapeutically to
cause beneficial effects in the human body. Sensors could be developed to measure the
ripeness and freshness of food by measuring the amount and coherence of its light
emission. Medical conditions could be diagnosed non-invasively, and a new understanding of
how consciousness operates at a quantum level might even emerge. One of the applications
most recently to be considered is the use of resonant microwave radiation to awaken
dormant phages within bacteria which then kill them; this alternative electromagnetic
therapy could be particularly welcome given the increasing immunity of certain strains of
bacteria to conventional antibiotics.
Imagine this; your docile plantation in the backyard suddenly craves
for metal food and gobbles up your only car overnight! You think I'm kidding on this one?
Well… you are right. But wait till you hear this: Scientists are perfecting a
genetically modified sprout that will absorb nickel, copper and cadmium from contaminated
soil. In a few years, heavy-metal sprouts may be grown to clean up old industrial sites,
say the Oxford-based researchers. It may even be possible to recycle these metals by
harvesting sprout leaves, burning them and then extracting the nickel or cadmium from the
resulting ash.
Several species of flower are known to thrive in soil that has
concentrations of metal high enough to kill most other plants. For example, in Britain,
Alpine pennycress (Thlaspi caerulescens) is only found on land - around old mines - that
is contaminated with zinc, lead and cadmium. All plants absorb small amounts of metal
through their roots and on to their leaves, However, pennycress and closely related
alyssum plants do it to an extraordinary degree. The key to the Oxford team's approach has
been their discovery of the mechanism that controls this absorption and transfer - a
naturally occurring amino acid called histidine. They are going to isolate these genes and
insert them into crops that are especially quick growers which includes sprouts, cabbages,
kale and turnips. The team - which is in discussion with several biotechnology companies
believes it will be able to create its first heavy-metal sprouts (or kale or cabbage)
within three years! Such crops will not only be invaluable in cleaning up land rined by
factories or mines, but could also be used following serious pollution accidents. US and
Ukrainian scientists are already growing crops to remove radioactive chemicals from fields
around Chernobyl. In theory, the only drawback to the scheme is the danger that pollen
from heavy-metal sprout plants will spread. However, the team discount the risk of this
happening. "We will also engineer our plants so they don't make viable pollen,"
said Dr Thompson. Effectively, they will be sterile. But then, who know? If dino's in
Jurassic Park could break loose, so can the tiny pollen. So the next time you hear of a
car that just disappeared; be careful… the pollens have arrived!!!
— Yash
Chi’p’ower : A
breakthrough in the way chips consume power, reported by University of California’s
Information Science Institute(ISI), could dramatically cut power consumption by 80% and
make possible new types of highly IC designs. Researchers within the ACMOS group at ISI
have patented a prototype microprocessor called AC-7, which consumes 1/5th of
the power of a similar CMOS microprocessor. THE design uses pulsed power and adiabatic
changing techniques which recycle some of the power used in chip’s clock cycle. It is
not sure if the same techniques can be applied to commercial microprocessors and other
chips, but chip companies will be able to buy licences for the technology. In conventional
chips, the clock consumes a large fraction of the total energy supplied, to the chip, of
which eventually winds up as heat. ISI’s experimental chip has 2 different clock
circuits. It can work with ordinary clock mechanism, or a flip of a switch will activate
circuits that briefly converts the energy of the clock’s electric signals into
magnetic form. This captured energy is then converted into electrical form and returned to
power the data processing sections of the chip. Energy saving ranges from 75% to 80%,
depending as to how fast the clock is set to run. Yet in its energy recycling mode, the
chip is able to perform the very same computing tasks it performed using the conventional
clock circuits. The idea of using clock to reduce power consumption was first made in
1967, and in mid 1980’s, "hot clock" chips were designed for fabrication
using the then standard NMOS technology. Prototypes were made, but NMOS was soon eclipsed
by CMOS, and many thought that the hot clock systems will not work. But the ISI scientists
hope their success will spark new interest.Initial applications will probably be at lower
performance cost driven end of chip market. But applications include cell phones, digital
watches, portable computers etc. — Rahul Rao[TE Elecs]
UNIX DATE PROBLEM : As
the world awaits for the 21st century, the computer experts round the world
wait cautiously for the day of reckoning of the year 2000 bug. That night, while the world
throws a party and celebrates, many older machines and systems are expected to drop off
the grid, as their muddle two digit counter mistakenly process the year 2000 as 1900. But,
this is not the end to these problems. Looming ahead, is another D-day, when the day and
date settings deep inside the millions of computers will roll over to a value that the
machines do not understand. The likely consequences are system crash in critical systems
such as air traffic control, banking and many such frightening results. This issue, known
as the UNIX DATE PROBLEM, has its deadline a mere 38 years later. This UNIX date problem
occurs due to the manner in which the UNIX OS keeps track of time. Time is measured in
seconds since midnight, 1st Jan 1970, which is known as the "epoch".
It is stored in a variable called "time-t", which can store a value up to
2,147,483,647- but no larger! Thus, o the 19th of January ,2038 at 03:14:07,
this number of seconds will have reached and the time will be up for UNIX and several
operating systems, which are the heart and souls of the current Internet , as well as,
many untold government and industry systems. The makers of Debian GNU/Linux, a volunteer
distribution of the linux flavour of the UNIX OS, say that they will have the problem
solved. Before 2038, they propose to define "time—t" to be a 64bit variable
instead of a 32bit one and recompile all the programs. Such a UNIX product would then work
for another 292,271,023,017-odd years. However, quantifying the cost and assessing the
consequences of such a recompilation will definitely be a strenuous task. Though, we have
38 years to circumvent this hurdle, Jan 19,2038 could be only one of the dangerous dates
coming up in the computing world. — Rahul Rao [TE Elecs]
Black Holes : The presence of an
enormous black hole at the center of our galaxy has been detected by a researcher funded
Andrea Ghez, of the University of California-Los Angeles. "What lies in the center of
the Milky Way has been one of this century's 'big' science questions," said Terry
Oswalt, NSF program manager for Stellar Astronomy and Astrophysics. "Ghez's work has
massive implications on our understanding of how galaxies evolve." Black holes are
formed from the remnants of collapsed stars. A black hole consists of a large mass
compacted so densely that not even light can escape its force of gravity. Since Ghez could
not directly see a black hole, she inferred its presence by searching for the
gravitational influence it imposes on nearby objects she could see, namely stars. In 1995,
using the Keck I Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, Ghez began tracking the movement of
200 stars near the galactic center. She found at least 20 stars that exhibited the telling
signs of influence by extreme gravitational forces. These stars are spiraling around the
black hole at speeds of up to three million miles per hour-about 10 times the speed at
which stars typically move. In order to account for the rapid speeds of these stars, Ghez
determined that an object 2.6 million times more massive than our Sun must be concentrated
into a single black hole. Just getting a clear view of the center of our galaxy is an
impressive feat in itself. To overcome th distortion created by the Earth's atmosphere,
Ghez made her observations using a technique called "infrared speckle
interferometry." The procedure, which she helped develop, uses computers to analyze
thousands of high-speed, high-resolution snapshots. The result: an image that has at least
20 times better resolution than those made by traditional earthbound imaging techniques.
Using this technique in 1995, Ghez witnessed the disappearance of a star that was, at the
time, the closest object to the black hole. Whether the star was sucked into the black
hole, or simply went behind it, scientists may never know. But we have little to fear
about a similar fate for Earth, since the center of the Milky Way galaxy is approximately
24,000 light years away. Because of the Earth's position on an outer arm of the spiraling
Milky Way, much of our knowledge about galaxies does not come from our own. Ghez's
research, however, gives us a definitive view about a part of Galaxy that we have never
seen before. — Yash
 
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