World of Science and Technology

MTT Newsletter:25 - MTT Special Edition - Security Alert

2009-10-21T20:33:00.001+06:00

Salam Everybody,

It has been learned that the terrorists are using valid ID cards of Pakistani nationals, who are either died or lost their ID cards in the past. Additionally, some franchises of different mobile companies and irresponsible staff of these companies also issuing mobile SIMs without taking good care. Therefore, the government, with the co-operation of mobile phone companies, started a new service to let you know that how many SIMs are issued against your NIC credit card.

The procedure is very simple. No matter which mobile company you are using. Just send one SMS to 668 and write your ID Card number in the massage. Your mobile company will send you one sms notifying you number of SIMs issued against this ID Card from each mobile company servicing in Pakistan. Make sure that total number of SIMs issued against your ID Card number are in your knowledge. And If you have any questions or doubt about the information, you received. Please contact immediately with your mobile phone company.

Visiting their nearest office at earliest is highly recommended.

Use your new CNIC number and also try the old NIC number. Additionally, check all CNICs and NICs of your family members.

If members of your family or relatives are living abroad, especially those, who are illegal immigrants or asylum seekers in other countries. Please also check their CNICs and make sure that nothing wrong is going on, on their names. And they will not be thrown back or in the jail on fake terrorist allegations.

If you found any discrepancy, YOU MUST VISIT YOUR MOBILE PHONE COMPANY AND NEAREST POLICE STATION TO INFORM THEM ABOUT THE INCIDENT. Additionally, do let us know too. As we always need such informations to provide quality contents.

Thanks

Saj

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____________

When you start, you never stop. If you stop, you will never be able to start again.

Sajjad Ahmad

Freelance Writer & Researcher
Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Emails:
sajjad_pak@hotmail.com
sajjadahmad@markthetruth.com

WebSite:
http://www.markthetruth.com

Blogs:
http://pakistanfront.blogspot.com
http://pakistanisnotsleeping.blogspot.com
http://picnicplaces.blogspot.com
http://worldofscienceandtechnology.blogspot.com]

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MSN (and Hotmail) Access Denied?

2009-09-03T17:22:00.000+06:00

MSN (and Hotmail) Access Denied?

Effective September 1, 2009, access to Hotmail and MSN accounts using HTTP protocol is no longer possible

Problem: If you have an MSN or Hotmail account and are suddenly getting 'access denied' errors when you try to download mail through Outlook you probably missed the announcement that access using the HTTP protocol was going to end for good on Sept 1, 2009.

Task 'Hotmail: Folder:Inbox Synchronizing headers.' reported error (0x800CCC33) : 'Access to the account was denied. Verify that your username and password are correct.The server responded 'Forbidden'.

From now on out users will need to use either the Outlook Connector or POP3/SMTP

Outlook Connector - works with Outlook 2003/2007 only.

Note: you need to install the connector and configure your account.

All versions of Outlook (and any email program that supports POP3) can use POP3. Be sure to set Outlook to leave mail on the server if you also use the web interface to view mail or it will be removed from the server once Outlook downloads it.

Configuring POP/SMTP

Incoming server name: pop3.live.com
Outgoing server: smtp.live.com

While setting up the account. click on the More Settings button and on Outgoing Mail Servers tab, select the My server requires authentication box. Most people will need to use the default option of Use same settings as my incoming server.

Click the Advanced tab, and under Server Port Numbers, enter the following information:
· In the Incoming mail (POP3) box, type 995.
· In the Outgoing mail (SMTP) box, type 587.
· Under both Outgoing mail (SMTP) and Incoming mail (POP3), select the 'requires secure connection (SSL)' check box. In Outlook 2007, choose Auto; use SSL for Outlook 2003
· Under Delivery, select the Leave a copy of messages on server check box if you want to see your messages when you use Hotmail in a web browser, your mobile phone, or other e-mail programs. By default, Outlook will delete the messages from the Hotmail server when they are downloaded to your computer.

Using the Outlook Connector

After you download the Outlook Connector, close Outlook (if open) and install the connector. Go to Control panel, Mail and open your profile and delete the HTTP account. Create a new account using the Connector

Windows Live Mail client

If you don't want to use POP3 and don't have Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007, you can use the Live Mail client. It's free (and includes a calendar).

You can download it from http://download.live.com/wlmail.

Source: http://www.slipstick.com/problems/msn_denied.asp

____________

When you start, you never stop. If you stop, you will never be able to start again.

Sajjad Ahmad

Freelance Writer & Researcher
Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Emails:
sajjad_pak@hotmail.com
sajjadahmad@markthetruth.com

WebSite:
http://www.markthetruth.com

Blogs:
http://pakistanfront.blogspot.com
http://pakistanisnotsleeping.blogspot.com
http://picnicplaces.blogspot.com
http://worldofscienceandtechnology.blogspot.com]

Please do click our sponsers' adds. This generate revenue and enable us to provide more quality contents to you.

Indian Ocean: New power game in the offing?

2009-08-31T19:54:00.000+06:00

By Iftekharul Bashar

In the ancient Sanskrit literature the Indian Ocean is known as Ratnakara meaning "the maker (creator) of jewels." The real relevence of this name is being understood in this twenty-first century, as the high strategic value of this vast ocean is making it a theatre of maritime dominance of the Asian powers. Today's jewels certainly are trade, influence and power, a raison d'être for these developing countries to modernize and expand their maritime strength and broaden their sphere of strategic influence.

The Indian Ocean provides major sea routes connecting the Middle East, Africa, and East Asia with Europe and the Americas. It carries a particularly heavy traffic of petroleum and petroleum products from the oil fields of the Persian Gulf and Indonesia. Large reserves of hydrocarbons are being tapped in the offshore areas of Saudi Arabia, Iran, India, and Western Australia. An estimated 40% of the world's offshore oil production comes from the Indian Ocean. The ocean's importance as a transit route between Asia and Africa has made it a scene of conflict. Because of its size, however, no nation had successfully dominated most of it until the early 1800s when the United Kingdom controlled much of the surrounding land.

The global power gravitas is clearly shifting towards Asia, while the strategic landscape in the region remains marked diversity of conflict. With phenomenal rise of China and India, the Indian Ocean will matter more as these key players enter into a great-power rivalry in these waters as the whole Indian Ocean seaboard, including Africa's eastern shores, becomes a vast web of energy trade. Triggered by economic growth and strategic perception (shaped by the history and strategic culture), both China and India are investing in extensive military modernization and expansion. These are evidenced by their efforts to build up maritime strength with a view to attain supremacy in the Indian Ocean.

China has a very different name for this ocean. They call it Xiyang (Western Ocean). In 2009, for the first time, official Chinese state media quoted Defense Minister Liang Guanglie stating China's intention to build aircraft carriers. For China, building aircraft careers is all about underlining China's rise in the international system. The argument is that all great powers build strong navies. And nothing demonstrates the maritime power of a nation more than an aircraft carrier. An aircraft carrier is a warship designed with a primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, acting as a seagoing airbase. Aircraft carriers thus allow a naval force to project air power great distances without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations.

The enthusiasts of sea-power in China insist that without aircraft carriers, China will be unable to secure its growing interests far from the national shores and defend its massive sea-borne trade from threats. They highlight the fact that China is the only major power in the world today without a carrier capability. This year China has a defence budget of $70 billion, and a large share is to go to the navy rendering it the fastest growing arm of Chinese military.

Meanwhile, the Indian navy has already begun a comprehensive program to acquire power-projection platforms ranging from aircraft carriers to landing-platform dock ships. According to a leading international think tank, over the next decade the Indian navy plans a fleet of 140-145 vessels, of which half will be designed ocean-going. India is enthusiastic about strengthening its maritime capability with an ambition to establish its supremacy. Robert D. Kaplan, a noted expert on Indian Ocean Region, is of the opinion that "India is seeking to increase its influence from the Plateau of Iran to the Gulf of Thailand - an expansion west and east meant to span the zone of influence of the Raj's viceroys."

The indigenous aircraft carrier with a tonnage of 37,500, designed by the Indian Navy, can operate Russian MiG-29K, Ka31 helicopters and indigenous Light Combat Aircraft fighters. It will have two runways for takeoff and one for landing, and can accommodate up to 30 fighter aircraft. It is expected to be completed by 2011 and put into use by the Navy by 2014. The biggest warship to be ever built in India, all with home-made steel, the carrier will be about five times larger than the 6,700 tonne Delhi class of destroyers, the largest warships made by India.

The carrier will also be equipped with home-made long-range surface-to-air missile system with multi-function radar and close-in weapon system, according to navy officials. With a length of 260 meters and a breadth of 60 meters, the warship will be propelled by two shafts, each coupled to two LM2500 gas turbines developing a total power of 80 megawatt, sufficient to attain speeds over 28 knots, said the officials.

The project started in 2002 with the designing but was launched into fast track in 2006 when the construction of the warship building blocks began in Kochi.

India purchased the INS Viraat aircraft carrier from British Royal Navy in 1986, and thus became the only nation in Asia operating such a warship. Indian strategic experts view it as "a quest for sea supremacy". Indian policymakers are of the opinion that "the indigenous aircraft carrier will make the Indian Navy strong and self reliant." As Indian economy grows, the country's gas, oil and other commodity imports are climbing rapidly.

The Indian Ocean is bounded on the north by Asia (including the Indian subcontinent, after which it is named); on the west by Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and Australia; and on the south by the Southern Ocean (or, traditionally, by Antarctica).

Major powers will concentrate on the Indian Ocean region given its strategic and economic significance. A new power game in the region is of a high probability and this may have a significant destabilizing impact on the regional states. The regional states should keep in mind that this region is vital to the regional and global economy. The international community should also encourage peaceful settlement of the maritime disputes.

Bangladesh faces the Indian Ocean through the Bay of Bengal. For Bangladesh access to the oceans via Bay of Bengal is of utmost strategic importance. The recent development in Myanmar is a matter of concern for Bangladesh. The spat with Yangon in November 2008 over a rig placed by Myanmar for exploration purposes in territorial waters claimed by Bangladesh was a "wake up call" for Dhaka. The media has reported the Bangladesh navy as having a ten year plan to upgrade itself into a "three dimensional force", which is very logical. The Myanmar navy has grown enormously since 1988. Now it seeks blue water capability. Further modernization is only a matter of time. In this context Bangladesh must seriously assess and develop its own maritime capability to match the reality. The rapidly evolving strategic scenario in the Indian Ocean Region is something that Bangladesh should take into serious consideration. In Bangladesh, there is a surprising lack of research in maritime issues. We cannot defend our national interest vis-à-vis maritime boundary and exploration of oceanic resources unless we know the ocean well.

The Indian Ocean is gradually being militarised by many littoral states. The peacetime functions of the navy of many coastal countries have changed considerably. It is not confined to defence of territories. The navies patrol the distant waters to keep safe the sea-lanes for transportation of oil from the Middle East to Far East and promotion of trade. Bangladesh needs to monitor and consider how to play a role in the area of security of the Indian Ocean.

Whoever controls Indian Ocean controls Asia. Though some experts reject any possibility of a large scale confrontation as the economic cost will be too high for both of the countries to bear. Militarization of the Indian Ocean may not be the disease but a symptom which will influence the future of not only Asia but also the rest of the world.

The author is a Research Associate at Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs

____________

When you start, you never stop. If you stop, you will never be able to start again.

Sajjad Ahmad

Freelance Writer & Researcher
Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Emails:
sajjad_pak@hotmail.com
sajjadahmad@markthetruth.com

WebSite:
http://www.markthetruth.com

Blogs:
http://pakistanfront.blogspot.com
http://pakistanisnotsleeping.blogspot.com
http://picnicplaces.blogspot.com
http://worldofscienceandtechnology.blogspot.com

Pakistan to launch first satellite in 2011

2009-08-18T23:36:00.000+06:00

ISLAMABAD, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- Dr Samar Mubarakmand, a renowned Pakistani nuclear scientist, said that Pakistan would launch its first space satellite in April 2011, local media reported Tuesday.

Talking to a private TV channel on Tuesday, Dr Samar said the satellite, likely to be sent into earth orbit, would monitor mineral and agriculture programs and weather conditions.

He said this project is funded by the Pakistani Planning Commission and there is no scarcity of funds for nuclear and space projects of the country.

Dr Samar said the country's nuclear program was not inferior to any other country in its standard and proficiency.

Dr Samar is a nuclear scientist and nuclear physicist, and was the chairman of Pakistan's National Engineering and Scientific Commission in 2001-2007, according to local news agency NNI.

He largely contributed to the nuclear program of Pakistan and he was awarded three highest civil awards of the country. He got the national fame in May 1998 when he headed the scientists' team which conducted the six nuclear tests in southwest Pakistan's Balochistan province.

Happy Independence Day - Watan Ki Miti Gawah Rehna

2009-08-14T16:58:00.000+06:00

A very happy independence day to all of you. May Allah give you everything, you desire and pave the way of progress and prosperity. A poet had said,

Jin Logo Ne Khun De Ker Is Phool Ko Rangat Bakhshi Ha

Do Char Se Dunya Waqif Ha Gumnam Najane Kitne Ho

Those who gave their lives and blood and those, especially our mothers, daughters and sisters who were either kidnapped or raped and killed, for our better, safe and secure future are the real heroes of our country.

It was not just a piece of land, but the demand of our beloved religion, Islam, which require us to spend our life according to the rules set by it.

14th of August is a Black Day for those who try to penetrate in to our unity, faith & discipline. Being a united, with strong commitment with our faith and by keeping our discipline at best, we can easily and comfortably come over them. That is why, the slogan of Unity, Faith & Discipline has been given to us.

After the death of Mr. Jinnah, Madre Millat Mohtarma Fatimah Jinnah said that we need to transform our polity according to the principles of Islam and Pakistan is supposed to help the Muslim world in in particular and the whole world in general. Therefore, during your celebrations, I shall request you all to spare at least one hour and draw your plan for next one year that how you will pay your part of contribution in this matter.

Begin your celebration with thanks giving prayers and end with commitment that you will never let your nation down, you will never let your religion down and you will do whatever you will have to do for the best of this Allah given country and for the poor, innocent and beautiful people of Pakistan.

Here is an Independence Day gift for all of you from me.

1. Happy Independence Day - Allah O Akbar

http://www.markthetruth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=234

2. Happy Independence Day - Tum hi sai aai Mujahido

http://www.markthetruth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=233

3. Ae Watan Payare Watan

http://www.markthetruth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=9

4. Happy Independence Day - Watan Ki Miti Gawah Rehna

http://www.markthetruth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=232

Pakistan Zindabad

____________

We all need to unite and stand as one against the common enemies

Sajjad Ahmad

Freelance Writer & Researcher
Rawalpindi, Pakistan

WebSite: http://www.markthetruth.com
Email: sajjad_pak@hotmail.com

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Pakistan Air Force to complete induction of four Ilyushin Il-78 aircraft by 2010

2009-08-11T17:19:00.000+06:00

Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Rao Qamar Suleman has said that the Pakistan Air Force plans to complete the induction of up to four Ilyushin Il-78 aircraft fitted with a mid-air refueling capability, extending the capacity of its fighter aircraft to patrol areas over the border region by 2010.

Pakistan plans to 4 Il-78 as air-to-air refuellers

In an exclusive interview, Rao Qamar said, the refueling capability is an "extremely significant" development. "This is an absolutely new capability we are getting, which we are inducting. We never had this capability in the Pakistan Air Force," he said.

Answering to a question, he said, US-supplied F-16 multirole fighter aircraft can stay for up to four, five, six hours in Pakistan's northern areas, ranging from the northern Swat valley and its surrounding region.

"During this time, if there is any militant attack anywhere in the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas], these aircraft can go there immediately, within minutes, and they can bomb the militants. It will create the right kind of deterrence against the militants", he said.

He said the PAF's operations in the north have brought significant pressure to bear on Taliban militants, who were on the advance until the recent military campaign in Swat began reversing the tide.

"They [Taliban militants] never see us on the ground. The only time they find out that an aircraft has struck is when the bomb explodes on them. It creates a great psychological impact", he said.

Replying to a question, Rao Qamar went on to say, the PAF was focused on enemy air forces. We remained focused on enemy land forces and enemy air forces and, therefore, we were preparing ourselves to fight against organized modern air forces and against modern armies.

"We never thought we would be required to fight against militants or be involved in counter-insurgency operations. When we started this [counter-insurgency], we had to learn while on the job. We had to re-orient our thinking, we had to refine our existing SOPs [standard operating procedures] and we had to develop new SOPs for this kind of warfare. However, we did that very quickly", he said.

The recent operation has led the PAF to identify new areas for development, such as acquiring more precision-guided bombs, enhanced night precision attack capabilities and the capability to monitor communications and track the movement of militants, he said.

The PAF's other, already established, requirements include the development of the JF-17 Thunder fighter aircraft, co-produced with China, he said.

The PAF plans to eventually induct up to 250 JF-17 fighters, making the aircraft the backbone of its inventory, he said, adding that, the first 'fully made in Pakistan' JF-17 is expected to be produced by the end of this year at the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC) in Kamra, north of Islamabad. However, there is still a requirement for a more advanced fighter aircraft, as the PAF prepares to counter the future edge that may be acquired by the IAF once it completes the planned purchase of 126 multirole combat aircraft (MRCAs), he said.

"We knew about this requirement of the Indian Air Force for 126 latest-generation fighter aircraft. Yes, it is an alarming development because when they get 126 such capable aircraft, then we also need to have something matching to counter that threat," ACM Qamar said.

Replying to a question, he said, the PAF has finalized the technical proposal for the FC-20 and informed the Chinese of its requirements.

"[The technical proposal] is more or less finalized now. There are some changes that are required, which [the Chinese] are making," he said.

The next stage of the contract will involve financial negotiations between China and Pakistan, he said. Air Chief Marshall Qamar believes that, following the signing of a contract, it will take two to two-and-a-half years before the first FC-20 aircraft is received.

Rao Qamar Suleman answering to a question said the PAF has also signed a contract for the purchase of four Chinese airborne early warning and control aircraft. The first of these is due to arrive in 2011 and the remaining three will be delivered in 2012.

MTT Learning Centre - Letter to Editor

2009-08-05T19:03:00.000+06:00

MTT Learning Centre Letter to Editor

Sometimes, there may be a situation, when you decide to write a letter to the editor. May be you are so passionate about the new political developments in your country or you want to keep the record straight. Whatever the reasons are. the letter to the editor is a great way to interact with the editors and in the meanwhile, it helps you bring certain matters under attention of the editors. There may be many other reasons, why you are intending to write a letter to the editor. Similarly, there would also have many benefits of writing a letter to the editor and here we are going to talk about them one by one and we will end up with the generally accepted format of the letter to the editor. Which, you can freely use for this purpose.

New Trends & Culture - TipJar

2009-08-02T19:26:00.000+06:00

New Trends & Culture - TipJar

The concept of TipJar is quite new though. But there are hundreds of thousands of people around the world, who are successfully using it to fund their welfare projects and also to earn their bread & butter over the Internet. However, in the countries like Pakistan, majority of the Internet users, bloggers and website owners are still unfamiliar with this terminology. Thus loosing potential revenue by not using this technique. So, what is TipJar? And how it benefits to you?

Read Full Article at: http://www.markthetruth.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=86:tipjar&catid=12:business-a-economy&Itemid=17

Making Robots Give the Right Glances

2009-07-23T18:29:00.000+06:00

By mimicking nonverbal actions, robots could become better assistants.

By Kristina Grifantini

If robots are to become a common sight in homes and public spaces, they will need to respond more intuitively to human actions and behave in ways that are easier for humans to understand. This week, at the 2009 IEEE Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) conference, in La Jolla, CA, researchers will present recent progress toward these twin goals.

Talking to me?: This robot, called Robovie, uses gaze cues to manage a conversation involving more than one person.
Credit: Bilge Mutlu

Several research teams are exploring ways for robots to both recognize and mimic the subtle, nonverbal side of human communication: eye movements, physical contact, and gestures. Mastering these social subtleties could help machines convey meanings to supplement speech and better respond to human needs and commands. This could be crucial if robots are ever to fulfill their potential as personal assistants, teaching aides, and health-care helpers, say those involved.

Scientists from Carnegie Mellon University will present details of experiments involving a robot that uses eye movement to help guide the flow of a conversation with more than one person. Developed in collaboration with researchers from Japan's Osaka University and from ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratory, this trick could prove particularly useful for robots that act as receptionists in buildings or malls, or as guides for museums or parks, the scientists say.

"The goal is [to] use human communication mechanisms in robots so that humans interpret behaviors correctly and respond to them in an appropriate way," says Bilge Mutlu, a member of the team from Carnegie Mellon. After all, Mutlu notes, "we don't want to create an antisocial, shy robot."

The robot used for the experiments, called Robovie, was developed previously at ATR. To give Robovie the ability to combine gaze with speech, the researchers first developed a model of the way that people use their eyes during a conversation or a discussion. They studied the social-cognition literature to develop predictive models, and then refined these models by collecting data from laboratory observations. Finally, the group incorporated this data into the software that controls Robovie in different conversational settings.

Human interaction: Robovie interacts with volunteers.
Credit: Bilge Mutlu

During the experiments, Robovie played the role of a travel agent, greeting participants, introducing itself, and then asking a series of questions to determine where the participants would like to travel. Three conversational scenarios were also tested: addressing one participant while ignoring the other; addressing one participant while acknowledging the other as a bystander with quick glances; and addressing both participants equally, with equal amounts of eye contact.

The team found that Robovie was able to guide the flow of a conversation effectively. Those at whom the robot gazed for longer took more turns speaking, those to whom Robovie sent acknowledging glances spoke less, and those who were ignored completely spoke the least. This pattern was consistent about 97 percent of the time. The researchers say that future work will combine the robot's gaze with other nonverbal cues, including gestures.

Another team at the conference is focusing on simple physical contact. Using a small, remote-controlled humanoid robot, scientists from the Netherlands conducted an experiment in which they showed volunteers the robot attempting to assist a person using a computer. The volunteers described the robot as less machine-like and more dependable when it proactively offered help and engaged in physical contact with, for instance, a shoulder pat or a high five. "We showed that how behaviors such as proactiveness and touch are combined matters," says Henriette Cramer, a researcher and PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam, who will present the findings tomorrow. She says that the goal of her team's research is to find out when and what kind of physical contact works. "We think touch is an important aspect of interaction and we want to further explore its effects, especially in combination with other social behaviors," she adds.

"We're really looking at building into these robots very humanlike social abilities," says Brian Scassellati, a professor who studies human-robot interaction at Yale University and who is the program co-chair for HRI 2009. The field of human-robot interaction is young but growing rapidly, says Scassellati, and it is revealing much about human social psychology. "It's only really in the last 10 years or so that we've had the computational and perceptual capability on these machines to really make a difference," he notes.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22271/page1/

A Reporter's Moon Trip

2009-07-23T18:26:00.000+06:00

The rewards of reporting an epic journey of man are more than the excitement of the moment. The audience shares new perspectives on another world.

By Victor K. McElheny

This article was first published in Technology Review's October/November 1969 issue. It is being published online in celebration of Apollo's 40th Anniversary.

"Voyages to the end of man's experience and into the beginning of space are . . . the physical embodiment of the modern age of mental exploration--the age of science . . . in a land where minds and ships can roam beyond the reach of authority, tyrannical forms cannot endure."
Credit: NASA

I cannot remember just when I became convinced that men would land on the moon someday, just as I am now convinced that men will go on and land on other bodies in the solar system.

When I was a child, I gave no special thought to a lunar landing, because Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers (of the 25th century) already were making much longer journeys to imaginary planets. To be sure, the little books from the Hayden Planetarium said that one would be able to leap about remarkably on the moon, but they also told what your weight would be on Mars or Jupiter or Saturn.

A moon-trip definitely was real for me before President Kennedy in 1961 announced the national goal of a lunar landing in this decade (I remember asking myself then whether the nation was so self-doubting, so sick, that it needed such a tonic). When I visited Antarctica as a science reporter in November, 1960, it struck me that the glimpse I was getting of icy emptiness was the closest I would ever come to the feeling of walking on the lunar surface.

Often since then I have rolled that thought around in my mind, as a way of expressing the sense of the extreme which Antarctica gives. But I never was prepared for the familiarity of the view when the ghostly dots and lines from the little television camera on the moon spread across a screen in the large auditorium of the Manned Spacecraft Center near-Houston, Texas, the night of July 20,1969.

The Benignity of an Age of Science
It is to be present at events like the televising of the moon-walk and to write about them that I became a science reporter almost as soon as I graduated from college in 1957. I believe that events in science and engineering are the keys to the world in which I exist.

The first science story which truly excited me was medical. In Charlotte, N.C., where I was working at the time, I happened to see a closed-circuit television broadcast of an open-heart operation, in 1957 still an experimental procedure. A surgeon in Philadelphia, whose voice could be heard along with a kibitzing panel of leading heart surgeons, cut open the patient's chest to reveal a beating heart, throbbing about wildly in the open air. I reflected then that until open heart surgery had become practical, the largest number of such operations had occurred on top of a pyramid in the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, as religious sacrifices. But here a modern physician, with the confidence born of scientific knowledge, was operating on the heart to heal it, not tear it out. To do this, he stopped the beating with a drug and turned over the heart's functions to a heart-lung machine while he scraped out the coronary artery (a number of the panel thought the operation rather unlikely to be useful for long).

There it was, the spirit of experimental investigation linked to the desire to heal. I have never been cured of that image of the essential benignity of an age of science.

Sensing the Quality of Exploration
Despite the fact that a whirlwind of interest in space, set moving by Sputnik, also led to my finding a market for science reporting, I never saw a rocket-firing of any size until November 9, 1967, when the first U.S. Saturn V lifted off from Cape Kennedy, Fla., on a flawless first test of the moon booster.

It was only my third visit to Cape Kennedy. The first had been a brief Air Force Reserve trip aboard a DC-3 in 1962, just before John Glenn's three-orbit flight. (This was less than a year after Yuri Gagarin's one-orbit inaugural of the era of manned space flight--Will the Russians get a man to the moon as quickly after Apollo 11?)

A second visit to Cape Kennedy came on January 28, 1967, just a month after I joined the Boston Globe after three years' reporting abroad for Science magazine. It was the day after three astronauts had suffered an almost-instant death by suffocation in the cabin of an Apollo spacecraft intended for launch the next month. The atmosphere at Cape Kennedy was incongruous. In brilliant midwinter sunshine, a horde of reporters wandered around, searching for insights into what had happened. Many of them, like me, knew so little that they had nothing to contribute to the story. I had no engineer friends from whom I could obtain even fragmentary information. I hated the leaden, grief-filled atmosphere of rumor.

My only function, I decided, could be to resist rumors and remind readers that a huge system for going to the moon had been constructed, that such a system could not be perfect, and that its momentum would be slowed but not stopped by the deaths of three astronauts, Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee. I was helped to make this point when Richard Lyons, then of the New York Daily News and now of the New York Times, showed me an account of remarks made the previous month by Joseph Shea, then Apollo Spacecraft Manager in Houston, in which he noted that some 20,000 failures had showed up during the preparation of the first Apollo spacecraft and that at some point a space engineer, like any other, had to decide when things were good enough.

The weekend thus gave me my first taste of the immense difficulty of covering the moon-flight program-- or even of achieving much sense of the quality of what was going on. The program was too huge and too important for me to grasp its many operations easily, or to permit of easy access to important places or people.

This does not mean that the program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is some sort of deep dark secret. To be sure, the agency has hundreds of public relations people, under the overall management of Julian Scheer, who has the rank of Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs. But it is not the job of these people to keep N.A.S.A.'s name out of the papers. Quite the reverse.

The justifications of N.A.S.A.'s program are unusual-- some would say shaky. It may be that going to the moon is inevitable, but many people argue against the urgency of doing it this decade, or even this century. The existence of a large "constituency" for N.A.S.A. in states like Florida, Louisiana, Texas and California where there are big agency installations or contractors' factories is not sufficient shield. The pathway to continued popular support that has evolved is an outpouring of news releases and briefings and tours that is simply stupefying. There is danger of drowning in the thousands of pages of releases and the dozens of hours of briefings.

Such an outpouring is not merely "news management." It could not have continued for a decade unless somebody out there--a sizeable fraction of the people of the world--were interested.

This view of Mission Control at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston during the Apollo 11 flight suggests the multiplicity of information which is available to the technical direction of the mission. Much of that information--a veritable Niagara, says Mr. McElheny--is also available to the press in the adjoining press room.
Credit: NASA

Information and Insulation
It is this Niagara of information--making the U.S. space program so public that it turns out to be a secret, hidden like the vital piece of paper in Poe's "The Gold Bug" by being displayed in the open--that is the real problem of covering trips to the moon, not N.A.S.A.'s occasional attempts to conceal possible political implications in the award of a large contract or to play down the seriousness of a rebuke to such a contractor for sloppy work.

But during an Apollo mission, the flood of information is vitally useful. With trifling exceptions, the entire volume of chatter between the astronauts and their controllers on the ground is made available, at first "live" over loudspeakers (or wires into stereo headsets) and then in the form of mimeographed transcripts made available within two hours of the time of the actual transmission.

At least twice a day, the flight controllers for one of three eight-hour shifts in Mission Control meet the press for questions about events during their shift. A reporter can attend such a briefing and ask his own questions; he can listen in from his desk in the nearby newsroom while looking at closed-circuit television; or he can tune in to the briefing over a local FM station which breaks into its running music program with all important Apollo mission transmissions, including briefings. If the reporter is trying to catch a meal or possibly some sleep, depending on his own deadlines and the sleep-work schedule of the astronauts, he can always fall back on the mimeographed transcript of the briefing.

As a further check on the accuracy of his own ear and also that of the relays of secretaries who make the transcript (there is a tendency for the secretaries to launder the text a bit, despite repeated injunctions from the press), the reporter can either record the transmissions himself on his own portable tape recorder or go into N.A.S.A.'s news office and listen to its tape of the proceedings.

All of this means that a reporter covering a moon flight is rather insulated from the quality of the event; and unless he takes care, he may easily fall out of sympathy with the environment and thus allow his copy to go stale. A great deal of time must be spent chained to a work table listening to current transmissions while studying the transcript of past transmissions and briefings; going to briefings; and returning to the work table to write stories which are either dictated to the home office over a telephone specially installed at the table for the duration or over nearby pay telephones (often in short supply) or, page by page, over teletypewriter circuits.

After all this, the reporters retire to nearby restaurants and bars in small clannish groups to interview and tease each other according to an elaborate code that is too amorphous to describe.

In such an environment, glimpses of real-live space men, or even of the moon up above, are fleeting.

One means of penetrating a little deeper into things is to use the little telephone on the work table to call up space officials you know and ask them questions. Another is to go see them, either by making a formal request to do so or by direct arrangement. Still another is to take somebody out to dinner at a restaurant well away from the space centers. Better still is to try to arrange interviews with key people at quiet moments when they are not too busy. But most of the time, reporters with deadlines to meet must be content with a hurried personal question asked immediately after a briefing.

With all this to do, reporters also find themselves in fairly continuous contact with their home offices, which want to know what stories the reporter plans to write, what their leading points are, and why the reporter hasn't included a particularly sensational point already available from the wire services. I think it's fair to say that the people who receive the largest number of phone calls are the reporters from the New York Times, and it is certain that the phone calls are not always appreciated.

"Sometimes You Can Push Too Far!"
In such a fevered climate, there isn't much room for spontaneity. I am reminded of how the same issue surfaced in 1959 on the Iowa farm of Roswell Garst when a horde of several hundred reporters, Harrison Salisbury in the lead, chased Nikita Khrushchev and Garst across the cornfields.

There is the story that Garst was so annoyed at the tension and the crush that he found time to kick Salisbury in the shin. Somehow, that sort of thing sticks out in an affair as managed as a Soviet leader's visit--or a moon flight--must be. The equivalent event during Apollo 11 came early on the morning of July 21, just after the moon walk, when Julian Scheer angrily ordered a television camera which was focusing straight at a bunch of sweating reporters frantically beating at their typewriters to be removed from the newsroom. When the camera would not move, the Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs angrily shoved a technician out of the way and began moving the camera, which was still on.

At many points during the flight, it was the custom of television newsmen at Houston to use the busy background of the newsroom during brief newscasts from the Manned Spacecraft Center. But this particular camera had been in a main aisle on an unusually crowded and tense evening for a long time. Immediately under the lights was a group from the French newspaper Le Figaro (which very kindly printed an essay about Apollo 11 which I wrote for the Globe but which it did not have space for). The French reporters, led by the capable Ann Thinesse, uttered not a word of protest. Ann continued to work on one of her sober, stylish dispatches in longhand. But meanwhile, a technician was telling Mark Bloom of the New York Daily News to bend down out of the way of the camera and when he wasn't quick enough about it the technician said, "Sometimes you can push too far, buddy." Mark thought so, too. He hit the ceiling and went off screaming, something he almost never does, to Scheer. Scheer then acted, to the inexpressible delight of the writer-journalists looking on One "big eye" flickered shut, if only briefly.

Affirming the Events
There is, unavoidably, a good deal of jealousy among writer-journalists toward television, the medium upon which they depend to witness such key events of a flight to the moon as the walk on the surface or the splashdown in the Pacific. A great many reporters, and many of their managers back in the home office, are convinced that more and more people are relying on television, that few people are reading much of the vast number of words they are writing and printing.

Certain it is that most people's view of an event such as Apollo 11 is shaped by what they saw of it on television, no matter how much better informed the best of the writer-journalists are than even the most enthusiastic television commentator, Walter Cronkite (who, quite frankly, makes a good many minor errors that nobody notices because he conveys a sense of personal involve ment in space flights). But it is also certain that people are reading more, not less, about a particular event because they saw it on television; and they are reading with more care, because they feel, with some justice, that they know something on their own.

The more important point is that television not only is evanescent; it also is overwhelming. Too much happens too fast. Television thrusts raw events at people, and they may wish to make more considered judgments. The immediacy of television must be strengthened by analysis and reflection. Only then, a day or a month later, can fleeting impressions be converted into a permanent mental image. For this--and for a significanl proportion of the public--a writer is needed.

"Nowhere are the penalties of an estrangement from nature more apparent than in a place like the moon. . . . In such an extreme environment, many of the definitions of ordinary life must give way. . . . Man must be in sympathy with the surroundings--like Captain Nemo--or they will kill him."
Credit: NASA

It is the writer who reminds the televiewer that Armstrong not only said, "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind," but also, "Isn't this fun?" and that Aldrin's first description of the moon was, "Magnificent desolation."

It is the writer who stays up late at night to watch the $50,000 party that President Nixon threw the Apollo 11 astronauts after they emerged from their multi-million-dollar quarantine quarters in Houston on August 13, and to remind television-sated Easterners who hadn't stayed tuned that astronaut Neil Armstrong, in brief remarks near the end of the dinner around 2 a.m. E.D.T., recalled a sign he had seen during the ticker-tape parade that morning in New York. The sign read, "Through you, we touched the moon."

It is the writer who watches a nationally televised press conference with the astronauts on August 12, in which the astronauts said the moon seemed friendly despite its barrenness; who notes that they had apparently come close to being unable to land because they had nearly exhausted their fuel margins; and who puts two and two together and reports the next day that Armstrong was so determined to land that he might have disregarded a warning from Houston not to touch down.

Armstrong made it clear that fuel margins which seemed small were in fact large in view of the circumstances; and that, if he had lost contact with Houston, he would have pressed on to a landing if the trajectory was safe. Armstrong was quietly making clear that the astronaut in charge of a lunar landing vehicle, the apex of a huge technological pyramid, was not a supine passenger.

The Social Power of Exploration
The writer is the special extension of his readers' sensitivities. In the second row of the darkened auditorium in Houston on July 20, I was sitting next to Walter Sullivan, the Science Editor of the New York Times. He, like me, had opted to watch the moon-walk uninterrupted, in contrast to many other morning-paper reporters in an immense, echoing press room nearby. They were watching the event out of the corner of one eye in a glaringly-lit room, listening to the moon-talk over stereophonic headphones, and clacking away at typewriters.

As it happens, Sullivan is the author of the best general history of Antarctic exploration (Quest for a Continent New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1957). We were both struck by how closely the barren ground of Tranquillity Base, viewed at the low sun angle of a lunar morning, resembled the blue and white snowscape at the South Pole during Antarctic summer.

Of course the resemblance was superficial, an accident of the medium--black and white television--by which most residents of the world's rich nations could bear witness to an event in a way that had never been possible before in the history of exploration. The astronauts themselves said that their surroundings in the Sea of Tranquillity, fancifully named by a 17th-century Italian astronomer, reminded them of a desert in the American southwest. As they spoke through the little two-way radios fitted into their back-pack life-support units, the astronauts were seeing the tawny colors of the moon's surface, of which they brought back ample evidence in many color photographs.

But if the colors were different, there were many other similarities between the moon, whose exploration has just begun, and Antarctica, whose exploration began only 70 years ago, just before the invention of the airplane.

Like the moon, Antarctica is a remote waste never inhabited by men until an age of scientific exploration. There is no trade with Antarctica and no military use for an expanse of 5.5 million square miles of ice at the southern extremity of the earth, dominating a hemisphere which is nearly all water and in which only 10 per cent of the world's people live. A rocket base makes as little sense in Antarctica as it does on the moon. If one is to have rocket bases at all, there are cheaper places closer to home to put them, places where the guardians of the rockets can live with their families, take correspondence courses and quickly replace the rocket's warheads when a better design comes along.

The circling of Antarctica by the ships of Captain Cook in the 1770's, the discovery of Antarctic coasts in the 1840's by Dumont d'Urville, James Clarke Ross and Charles Wilkes, and the attainment of the South Pole on foot by parties under Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott in 1911-12--all are landmarks in a living history of human exploration.

This history has reached another of its greatest climaxes with the first visit to the moon.

To those who ponder the values of such human achievements, let me simply proclaim that rigid intellectual forms, matching rigid social structures, cannot last in the face of a surprising new fact. It was possible to contest Copernicus' ideas of a group of planets revolving around the sun until Galileo's use of the telescope in studying the moon, and the moons of Jupiter, gave the theories of Copernicus unchallengeable empirical support. The work of Galileo, so intimately linked with the mountains of the moon, is a good candidate (among many) for the decisive event which launched the age culminating in a landing on the moon.

The immediate effect of such discoveries may be vanishingly small, even in the Apollo case when hundreds of millions watched it. A moon voyage may seem to count for no more than the fall of Icarus did to the painter Breughel, who depicted a very tiny splash in the midst of an immense landscape. Yet the splash occurred. The fact cannot be denied, and the exploration will continue--at however jerky a pace.

It is easy for an artist to mock the strivings of an Icarus. Explorers do not have an easy time giving words to their compulsion for searching out regions where nature shows its face in some extreme way, throwing light on the history and character of the planet on which we exist. Just why explorers, by their wanderings, should go on asking the question, "What is a Planet?" is not clear.

Antarctica, where few things exist except mosses, lichens, a few breeds of insects, seals, gulls and penguins, is one such region. The moon is another: lifeless, airless, waterless, lacking a magnetic field, of a different density from Earth, and now known to be covered with a layer of rather glassy dust. Neither Antarctica nor the moon have failed to produce their quota of surprises.

In such an extreme environment, many of the definitions of ordinary life must give way. Only an exceptional few can ever go to such a place. To live in a region of extremes means insulation from the natural environment; human contact with the surroundings must be restricted, remote. Yet, in order to design the protective equipment, someone must know enough about the surroundings to imagine their effect. Man must be in sympathy with the surroundings--like Captain Nemo--or they will kill him. Nowhere are the penalties of an estrangement from nature more apparent than in a place like the moon.

Such voyages to the end of man's experience and into the beginning of space are only the physical embodiment of the modern age of mental exploration--the age of science. In such an age, a science like astronomy, which has modest practical importance for navigators, can open men's eyes to the existence of another world. And in a land where minds and ships can roam beyond the reach of authority, tyrannical forms cannot endure.

Victor K. McElheny returned from his assignment in Britain as European Editor of Science in 1967 to become Science Editor of the Boston Globe at least in part so as to have first-hand experience with what he has called man's "majestic" effort to reach the moon and outer space. Since his retirement in 1998 McElheny has published two books, Insisting on the Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution. He is currently working on a book about the Human Genome Project.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/23041/page1/

The Business of Personal Genomes

2009-07-23T18:18:00.000+06:00

Jorge Conde speaks on the complexities of personal genomics

By Emily Singer

In some ways, Jorge Conde, cofounder of the genomics startup Knome, knows his clients more intimately than any other company president. Knome is the first company to sequence and analyze a consumer's complete genome. And Conde and his team have spent a full day with each member of their select clientele, going through the minute details of the results in search of hidden genomic time bombs, subtle health risks, and other information.

Genomic profile: Shown here is a close-up look at a genetic sequence done by Knome, a personal genomics startup in Cambridge, MA. The image shows a chromosome (top) and the letter-by-letter sequence (bottom) in a small section of that chromosome. The pink box highlights a specific genetic variation.
Credit: Knome

At $100,000, Knome's product is still out of reach for most consumers. But that could change fast. The cost of genome sequencing is dropping by an order of magnitude every one to two years, and the cost of Knome's product will drop with it, though not quite as fast. (When the company debuted its service in late 2007, it cost $350,000.) That means that within the next few years, having your genome sequenced will cost about the same as cataract surgery, making it affordable to include your genome sequence as an integral part of your medical record.

When launching Knome in 2007, Conde wandered into largely uncharted territory--only a handful of complete human genomes had been sequenced at the time. That meant that the company had to figure out how to select and analyze the most relevant information in the genome and then deliver that information to clients in a useful and digestible way. "We have to make sure they are not overwhelmed and don't misunderstand the information," says Conde. "This hadn't been done before, so we wanted to be responsible, informative, and entertaining."

So far, scientists understand only a tiny fraction of the 3 billion letters of the human genome. Knome's team developed software that combs both public and private genome databases for the latest in scientific research and then applies the findings to an individual's genome. The company has also developed new ways to filter and sort that information, developing a genome browser that allows users to search their genome by disease or by chromosome, and presents disease risk based on the level of confidence that can be gleaned from the existing research on the topic. The strength of the link between a genetic variation and a disease varies widely. Some genetic variants are definitively linked to specific diseases, such as cystic fibrosis or Huntington's disease, others are associated with a high risk of a disease, such as the BRCA mutations and breast cancer, while still others have been linked to a negligible increased risk for common diseases, including heart disease and diabetes.

Conde won't disclose how many people the company has sequenced so far--only that Knome's goal for 2008 was to sequence 20 people. "In comparison to the genomes that have been published, we think we've done more than anyone," says Conde. Some clients buy their genome sequence to help plan how to maintain their health. "Others do it for the shear thrill of having a front-row seat of what's going on in science," says Conde.

Customers so far have been mostly men--about 80 percent--and mostly in their mid-50s. A significant fraction of Knome's clients are from outside the United States, thanks to word-of-mouth recommendations from early customers. Dan Stoicescu, a millionaire living in Switzerland who was profiled last year in the New York Times, was the company's second client. Knome recently signed up two new customers, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and his father, Henry Louis Gates Sr., as part of a new documentary series slated to run on PBS next year.

People interested in having their genomes sequenced first go through an initial consultation "to make sure they understand what we can and cannot do," says Conde. "When you're operating at this price point, you don't want an unsatisfied customer." One of the biggest controversies in personal genomics to date has been the utility of currently available genetic information, especially for variations that have been only weakly linked to disease. For this reason, consumer genomics companies, including Knome, specify that they are not providing a medical service.

DNA is then isolated from a client's blood sample and sent to the Beijing Genomics Institute in China to be sequenced. Once complete, the sequence is analyzed at Knome. In order to assuage privacy concerns, the sequence data, along with the genome browser, reside only on a USB key given to the individual. "With this approach, you are the gatekeeper of your information," says Conde.

Clients get their key at an in-person meeting devoted to their genomes, where they are schooled by a clinical geneticist, a genetic counselor, a bioinformatician and others. (Clients are invited to bring their personal physicians, says Conde, though most don't.) "We spend the entire day going through genetics and sequencing 101, and then walking them through their genome," says Conde. "People often start out tense, thinking there will be a ticking time bomb in their genome. But then they start to relax and ask questions."

Knome hasn't yet found any ticking time bombs, such as the genetic variant that causes Huntington's disease. But Conde says that a couple of people were found to be carriers of genetic variants linked to rare diseases--meaning they will not develop the condition themselves, but might pass it to their children if their mate is also a carrier. And the company has found some rare variants that are highly associated with a particular condition. "One person has a high risk for developing age-related macular degeneration," says Conde. That gives him the option of doing early screening for the disease, though few preventative treatments are currently available.

Part of the service is figuring out what consumers understand, an issue that geneticists and ethicists have been grappling with as genomic information becomes more complex. "You don't realize which concepts will connect, which are understood and misunderstood," he says, adding that clients to date have run the gamut from very knowledgeable to minimally informed about genetics. He says it has been difficult for people to grasp the difference between genetic variations that cause disease, such as the Huntington's mutation, and those that are merely associated with different diseases--meaning that research studies have found a link between these genetic sequences and a disease, but it's not clear what role the gene plays or how strongly it increases disease risk in an individual. The latter represent the majority of disease-linked mutations identified to date.

Conde says that the lessons learned from the early adopters will serve the company well as more people can afford to invest in genome analysis. The company is currently developing a new, more-automated genome-interpretation service that will be offered in conjunction with genome sequencing from Illumina, a genomics technology company headquartered in San Diego. Illumina announced last month that it would offer personal genome sequencing for $48,000, but with minimal analysis of the data included. Analysis of the meaning of the human genome is proving to be more much more complicated than the sequencing itself. "In the long-term, that will be a big driver of value," says Conde. "We will see the high price point go away, and the real value for both individuals and companies will be to provide an ongoing narrative."

A Cell-Phone Microscope for Disease Detection

2009-07-23T18:14:00.000+06:00

A cheap smart-phone microscope could bring fluorescent medical imaging to areas with limited access to health care.

By Anne-Marie Corley

In a twist on traditional smart-phone accessories, researchers have demonstrated fluorescent microscopy using a physical attachment to an ordinary cell phone. The researchers behind the device say that it could identify and track diseases like tuberculosis (TB) and malaria in developing countries with limited access to health care, or in rural areas of the U.S.

Snap diagnosis: The Cellscope uses a blue-light LED and filters for fluorescence imaging. The sample is inserted next to the metal focusing knob.
Credit: David Breslauer

The "Cellscope," which came out of an optics-class project at the University of California, Berkeley, could capture and perform simple analysis of magnified images of blood and sputum samples, or transmit the images over the cell-phone network for analysis elsewhere.

The contraption--a tube-like extension hooked onto the cell phone with a modified belt clip--works just like a traditional microscope, using a series of lenses that magnify blood or spit samples on a microscope slide. To detect TB, for example, a spit sample is infused with an inexpensive dye called auramine. An "excitation" wavelength is emitted by the light source--a blue light-emitting diode (LED) on the opposite end of the device from the cell phone--and absorbed by the auramine dye in the spit sample, which fluoresces green to illuminate TB bacteria. Then automated software can count the green bacteria for a diagnosis in real time, or the image can be transmitted via cell network to a separate facility where doctors can analyze it and respond.

"The cell phone approach is very valuable for all parts of the world where [medical] resources are scarce," says Aydogan Ozcan, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at UCLA, who is working to develop a lens-free method for mobile cell imaging. "It's a great step forward in this important area."

The researchers involved with the project, led by Berkeley bioengineering professor Daniel Fletcher, describe their work in a paper published in the journal PLoS One. They previously demonstrated a prototype device that used white light, or bright-field imaging, to capture magnified images of blood cells stained to detect malaria parasites, an approach that could also identify the oddly shaped red blood cells indicating sickle cell disease. Fluorescence adds a new capability that could be particularly useful if made cheaper and portable.

"Fluorescence microscopy in resource-poor countries is hard," says Wilbur Lam, a bioengineer and physician in the UCSF School of Medicine who worked on the project as a clinical expert. "Lab-grade [fluorescence] technology is expensive and hard to operate," he says. "You need a dark room, a mercury lamp, and a lot of training." These facilities aren't available in many areas of developing nations, which, Lam notes, are the places that most need the technology to detect common diseases like TB. The Cellscope device could be distributed to health workers in remote areas, extending the reach of fluorescence-based medical imaging.

According to Fletcher, fluorescence is increasingly preferred by the World Health Organization as a TB detection tool, because it's easier for the untrained eye to spot something green than to pick out a colored stain against a bright-field background. However, with traditional fluorescence equipment, health workers still have to count spots on a microscope slide by eye, which can be unreliable. The Berkeley group developed software that counts the green spots automatically; when installed on the smart phone, it could make the process easier and faster.

The cell-phone microscope could also be useful for TB therapy, Lam says. TB patients must be directly observed taking their medication over several weeks, to prevent drug resistance buildup. The phone can store images for comparison, and it provides immediate feedback, so patients could go to their local health worker and see their progress each week, rather than waiting a month for samples to come back from a centralized processing location, or seeing complications of the disease show up three or four months later.

That ability to transmit microscope images makes the Cellscope a new tool for telemedicine, says Lam. And because the images can have GPS tags associated with them, they could provide early warning for disease outbreaks.

Digitizing medical records is another problem for health workers in the field. Fletcher's group ran into the issue while demonstrating their technology in Bangladesh and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Pen-and-paper records are easily lost--a problem that the cell-phone microscope could solve by attaching patient-identification information to each digital image. Records could then be called up for easy reference when a patient returns to the health clinic.

The researchers' key innovation, Lam says, was not inventing a new medical test, but rather taking a standard test and presenting it in a new way. Their technology "just happens to be smaller, cheaper, and attached to a cell phone," he says.

In a world with four billion cell phones, many in developing countries, Ozcan says, the cell-phone microscope could take advantage of existing infrastructure to fight disease on a new, more mobile front.

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/23059

How to Survive the Cost of the Newest Cell Phones

2009-07-14T20:25:00.000+06:00

Even though the financial system doesn't seem to be getting a great deal better, the general public still aren't eager to go without their cell phones. Cell phones have turned out to be such a big part of our lives that they've turned out to be more than merely a luxury, but more of a requirement. With recent technology materializing for cell phones all the time, it's hard to maintain the most up to date ones. However, you can still accomplish this by buying wholesale cell phones. When buying wholesale cell phones, you can get them at a reduced charge. Do you remember when the key app on your cell phone was to dial out and accept calls? Those days are a thing of history. Currently we have cell phones that are able to take pictures, text our buddies and loved ones, play games, play music, play TV shows and movies, email, and organizeour lives. Cell phones with all of these applications can cost a tiny fortune. A number of the applications are still considered luxuries, but as time continues, more and more of these advanced applications are becoming more of a need in people's daily lives. Cell phone technology has gotten to a place where we are almost obligated to upgrade our cell phone after only a year or so. Do you remember the cell phone you owned 5 years ago? Is it still in stock any more? It's in all likelihood outdated and the apps are most likely awful by current day's standards. The only way to be able to pay for the most recent and best of what's out there in cell phones is to procure one from a cell phone wholesaler. It only makes sense. Why would you spend more cash when you don't have to? You can procure some wholesale cell phones brand new while others can be purchased restored, but they're just as good as new. Just imagine it. If you procure a renovated cell phone, you're also contributing to preserving our environment by supporting those who recycle goods. By obtaining fixed up cell phones from a cell phone wholesaler, you are victorious and the environment is victorious! So, take a peek at all that cell phone wholesalers have to offer and have a blast shopping. You'll be surprised at what's out there and the amazing deals you can get.

Nokia N96 - Going for Domination!

2009-07-14T20:19:00.000+06:00

The Nokia N96 is the successor of the Nokia N95 and has features close to the same but with lots of advancements. With dimensions of 103 x 55 x 18 mm, the gadget weighs just 125 gm. It is a bit astonishing that a device with so many features is of such a low weight. A large number of ringtones are already available but still, if they are not sufficient for you, many more can be downloaded from the internet. These ringtones can be monotonic, polyphonic or even MP3 types and can alert you very easily. Also vibration mode is supported by the phone for alerting you without sound production. Ringtones from internet! Yes, through the Nokia N96 you can also access the internet, not only for downloading ringtones, but it also allows web browsing. Advanced features of Class 32 GPRS, Class 32 EDGE, HSCSD and HSDPA at 3.6 Mbps are all provided in the gadget and allow you to browse at a high speed not missing the browsing on your desktop computer. WAP 2.0 is available here as a comfortable interface for browsing, which further improves the performance. Wireless network can be accessed with the WiFi 802.11 coming in the gadget. For transferring music files or any other data we have the Bluetooth, and the USB, transferring them through a USB cord. But to transfer through these means, the other receiving end should also have similar means. The Bluetooth here also has the A2DP support. Snaps can be captured with the device through the 5 MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics lens. It also has the autofocus feature in it so that the subject can be focused with extreme ease. There again is the LED flash available in the camera of Nokia N96 which enables the user to get clear snaps even in dark. So, now you don't have to worry about the surrounding light if the N96 is in your hand. Its camera can also capture videos of VGA quality at the rate of 30fps. One more camera feature here is that it has a secondary camera for doing video calls. In such a call, the caller can enjoy live videos of the receiver on the condition that the receiver too has a camera with video calling feature in it. Where to store so much? Ringtones, snaps, downloaded items,etc. all can be stored in the gadget's internal memory of 16 GB and there is also the microSD card of 8 GB, to be attached if the internal one doesn't suffice. These memories together are good for a phone and you always have the option of transferring them to your desktop or laptop. For such a handset to work well, there is the requirement of a very good processor and a similarly capable operating system. They are both here! Nokia N96 has a Dual ARM 9 264 MHz processor with a Symbian OS 9.3, S60 rel. 3.2 which both make it work fast even in presence of loads of features. Stuffs enabling messaging are here in the form of SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging features. With the Instant Messaging feature, one can even chat with his or her online friends. Round the clock entertainment comes from the phone's Radio and games. Games can also be downloaded like other stuffs. Afraid of getting lost! Keep the Nokia N96 with you and its GPS supported by Nokia Maps won't allow to get lost. Battery support is very important for such helpful features to work for you. Here, you have a Standard battery, Li-Ion 950 mAh (BL-5F) supporting a 3G talktime of 2 hours 36 minutes. And all other stuffs of simple latest Nokia phones are also present here as an icing on a cake. So, this device is for you if you are looking for a gadget with so many advanced stuffs.

Fujitsu Siemens Computers renamed

2009-07-14T20:11:00.003+06:00

KARACHI (July 08 2009): The Fujitsu Siemens Computers has been renamed Fujitsu Technology Solutions (Holding) B.V., following its integration with Fujitsu Limited. A statement here on Tuesday said the new company, now a 100 percent subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited, was now operating jointly with Fujitsu Services and a unified management under the Fujitsu brand. It said that as a fully-owned subsidiary of Fujitsu, Fujitsu Technology Solutions continued to offer its customers in Pakistan access to a world-wide portfolio of dynamic infrastructures built around IA servers and combined with innovative services, along with integrated products and IT solutions tailored in a joint effort with Fujitsu Services. "The integration with Fujitsu is a major step in the strategy to expand the brand's capabilities and global perspective", said Stephane Rejasse, Managing Director for Fujitsu Technology Solutions ME. "With Fujitsu we have a strong and reliable parent company that fully supports our own business strategy and goals. Fujitsu is a pioneering IT company with research and development in its DNA and so are we. Becoming part of the Fujitsu Group is the perfect match for Fujitsu Technology Solutions. We can 'Think Global' from the inception of new products, and then 'Act Local' to serve the needs of our customers". The statement said the integration would allow Fujitsu to expand the Group's business with a focus on developing the global IT services business to meet increasing customer demand. The full integration of Fujitsu Technology Solutions, with its strong presence in the region, is the catalyst for Fujitsu's transformation into a truly global company. Together, Fujitsu and Fujitsu Technology Solutions will bring innovative and cost-competitive products to market by optimising platform product research and development. In the course of this collaboration, Fujitsu Technology Solutions will become one of the major linchpins of global research and development within Fujitsu. "With regard to our customers and channel in Pakistan, the integration of Fujitsu Technology Solutions will be a rewarding investment. Fujitsu has access to Fujitsu Technology Solutions' broad customer base and from this, is moving forward in the expansion of its presence in the market", said Sajjad Abbas, Country Manager- Oman, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Fujitsu Technology Solutions. "Our customers and channel partners will benefit from global access to a combined broad portfolio of products and services.

IT projects worth Rs 1,500 million under way in Punjab

2009-07-14T20:10:00.001+06:00

LAHORE (July 13 2009): Projects worth Rs 1,500 million, launched by the Information Technology department of Punjab are underway to enhance and computerise records of lands, driving licenses, urban properties and tax in the province of Punjab. The project of computerising number plates is to be completed by the end of year 2010 whereby land records would take a year to complete. This was revealed by Secretary Information Technology Punjab Mian Muhammad Zulqarnain Amer on Sunday. Software Technology Park, infrastructure projects, Lahore wide area network, computerisation of Public Service Commission, Punjab portal and computerisation of various offices will take place under the program of the provincial government, stated the Secretary. In addition, he continued, networking of police patrolling posts has already been completed to link them with the head office, he said.

Punjab government for promotion of information technology

2009-07-14T20:07:00.000+06:00

LAHORE (July 14 2009): The Punjab government is taking all possible steps to promote information technology in the province especially in the government offices. The Secretary Information Technology Punjab, Mian Muhammad Zulqarnain Aamer stated this while speaking at launching ceremony of interactive website of the Punjab Institute of Mental Health here on Monday. He said that information technology was among the most important segments of the modern world environment as it enables the organisations to communicate in fastest, reliable and convenient manners. Being the largest and oldest institute of mental health, PIMH had the largest record of various mental illnesses, which could be transformed into an elaborate database, he said. He further said that this database could not only be helpful for research purposes but if linked with other hospitals, could also help doctors diagnose and treat their patients, based on experience of this institution. The PIMH Executive Director Dr Nusrat Habib Rana said that website would help create a link among the institute and district headquarters hospitals of the province for the treatment of psychiatric patients.

Fw: University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore

2009-07-14T19:09:00.000+06:00

The main campus of the University of Engineering and Technology is located in the northern part of Lahore on the historical 'Grand Trunk' road, near the magnificent ShalimarGardens built during the great Mughal empire.

The institution started its career in 1921 as the 'MughalpuraTechnicalCollege'. Later it became the 'Maclagan Engineering College', a name given to it in 1923 when Sir Edwards Maclagan, the then Governor of the Punjab who laid the foundation stone of the main building, now called the Main Block, which still retains its majesty despite the wear and tear of over eight decades. At that stage the institution offered courses of study in only two disciplines; Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering.

In the year 1932, the institution was affiliated with the University of the Punjab for award of a Bachelor's Degree in Engineering. In 1947, at the time of independence, the institution was offering well-established B.Sc. degree courses in civil, electrical and mechanical engineering.

In 1954 it started a Bachelor's Degree course in Mining Engineering, the first-ever of its kind in the country. However, the real expansion and development of the institution commenced in 1961 on its transformation into the 'West Pakistan University of Engineering & Technology', and within a few years Bachelor's Degree courses were started in Chemical Engineering, Petroleum & Gas Engineering, Metallurgical Engineering, Architecture, and City & Regional Planning.

Later, the University started to develop its postgraduate programs, and by 1970's it was offering Master's Degree Courses in various specializations of engineering, architecture, planning and allied disciplines. Later, Ph.D. Degree Program was also instituted in a number of disciplines.

With phenomenal increase in students enrollment in seventies, the University established an Engineering College at Taxila in 1975, which later became an independent University in 1978 as the University of Engineering and Technology, Taxila.

At the present time, the University is developing three more campuses; the Faisalabad Campus, the Kala-Shah-Kaku Campus, and the RachnaCollege.

http://www.uet.edu.pk