India to unveil the £7 laptop
Government hopes its mini-computer, the world's cheapest, will bridge the digital divide between rich and poor
Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
guardian.co.uk, Monday 2 February 2009 16.37 GMT
Article history
The credit crunch computer is set to arrive tomorrow in India when officials unveil the 500 rupee (£7.25) laptop. In an attempt to bridge the "digital divide" in the country between rich and poor, the government will show off the prototype, low-cost laptop as the centrepiece of an ambitious e-learning programme to link 18,000 colleges and 400 universities across the country.
India has a reputation for creating ultra-cheap technologies, a trend sparked last year by the Tata Nano, the world's cheapest car at Rs100,000 (£1,450).
The computer, known as Sakshat, which translates as "before your eyes", will be launched as part of a new Rs46bn "national mission for education". This envisages a network of laptops from which students can access lectures, coursework and specialist help from anywhere in India, triggering a revolution in education. A number of publishers have reportedly agreed to upload portions of their textbooks on to the system. More
Prabhakar Rao, vice-chancellor of the university in Andhra Pradesh from where the Sakshat will be launched, said that India was "looking to get the hardware and software cheaper. In a developing country, costs have to be kept low so that the maximum number of students will benefit. That means cheap computers and cheap broadband access, so that students get access to ebooks and ejournals."
Although half of India's 1 billion people are aged below 25, the country has fallen behind in terms of university places, with only 11% of students enrolled, compared with double that in China. India's bigger northern neighbour already has 180 million internet users, five times India's total.
Designed by scientists at the Vellore Institute of Technology, the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras and the state-controlled Semiconductor Complex, the laptop has 2Gb of Ram and wireless connectivity. In an attempt to keep costs low, experts say it is unlikely to use familiar Microsoft Windows software.
Officials are confident that the Rs500 price tag can be met. RP Agarwal, the top civil servant for Indian higher education, told newspapers last week that "at this stage, the price is working out to be $20 [Rs1,000] but with mass production it is bound to come down."
Monday, February 2, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Skycar sets off on epic journey
From Haroon Siddique, The Guardian, London:
At 10 am on Wednesday the vehicle that can "drive like a car" and "fly like a plane" began a journey from the salubrious surroundings of Knightsbridge, London, to Timbuktu.
Bond's favourite inventor, Q, would probably approve of the Parajet Skycar, but even 007 might think twice about the hazardous mission that awaits it.
At 10 am on Wednesday the vehicle that can “drive like a car” and “fly like a plane” began a journey from the salubrious surroundings of Knightsbridge, London, to Timbuktu. The Skycar is heading for the Sussex coast from where the expedition leaders hope to fly over the Channel. The trip of 6,000km will take the car—in plane mode—over the Strait of Gibraltar, the Pyrenees, the Sahara and finally to the Malian city.
As well as natural barriers, the team has been warned about the threat of kidnapping in volatile parts of Africa and the car will have to negotiate a minefield in Maur-itania–“I might fly that one,” said 45-year-old expedition leader Neil Laughton.
When the need for flight arises–estimated to be for 40 per cent of the journey–a ParaWing, a parachute of the type used by paragliders, will be dragged behind the modified off-road buggy and the propeller on the back of the vehicle will boost the Skycar down whatever happens to be serving as an improvised runway. When it reaches 45mph, enough lift should be generated to get the car airborne, its weight supported only by “a silk handkerchief, a large one at that,” said Laughton.
Emphasising that the journey would be the Skycar's maiden voyage, the expedition leader admitted the car had not yet been tested to any “distance, heat or endurance” and that there was an element of “mad Brits” about the adventure.
Its inventor, Gideon Cardoso, 28, dubbed the “boy genius” by Laughton, will accompany the former SAS officer for part of the journey and a support team of up to 13 people will be on hand. read it all here
At 10 am on Wednesday the vehicle that can "drive like a car" and "fly like a plane" began a journey from the salubrious surroundings of Knightsbridge, London, to Timbuktu.
Bond's favourite inventor, Q, would probably approve of the Parajet Skycar, but even 007 might think twice about the hazardous mission that awaits it.
At 10 am on Wednesday the vehicle that can “drive like a car” and “fly like a plane” began a journey from the salubrious surroundings of Knightsbridge, London, to Timbuktu. The Skycar is heading for the Sussex coast from where the expedition leaders hope to fly over the Channel. The trip of 6,000km will take the car—in plane mode—over the Strait of Gibraltar, the Pyrenees, the Sahara and finally to the Malian city.
As well as natural barriers, the team has been warned about the threat of kidnapping in volatile parts of Africa and the car will have to negotiate a minefield in Maur-itania–“I might fly that one,” said 45-year-old expedition leader Neil Laughton.
When the need for flight arises–estimated to be for 40 per cent of the journey–a ParaWing, a parachute of the type used by paragliders, will be dragged behind the modified off-road buggy and the propeller on the back of the vehicle will boost the Skycar down whatever happens to be serving as an improvised runway. When it reaches 45mph, enough lift should be generated to get the car airborne, its weight supported only by “a silk handkerchief, a large one at that,” said Laughton.
Emphasising that the journey would be the Skycar's maiden voyage, the expedition leader admitted the car had not yet been tested to any “distance, heat or endurance” and that there was an element of “mad Brits” about the adventure.
Its inventor, Gideon Cardoso, 28, dubbed the “boy genius” by Laughton, will accompany the former SAS officer for part of the journey and a support team of up to 13 people will be on hand. read it all here
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
What spoiled the CERN party
R. RAMACHANDRAN Frontline vol 26, 2009
The investigating committee concludes that bad soldering led to the shutting down of the Large Hadron Collider.
CERN
Repair work under way on the dipole circuit in Sector 3-4, where the problem arose on September 19.
NINE days after the spectacular switching on of the world’s biggest and most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva (Frontline, October 10, 2008) on September 10, 2008, which was watched by an estimated one billion people and more across the world, a completely unexpected mishap struck this international scientific endeavour, the world’s biggest.
Built over nearly a decade and a half at a cost of about $8 billion by an international consortium of thousands of scientists, the gigantic, 27-kilometre-long circular machine is located in a 3.7-metre-diameter tunnel 100 m underground that straddles the Franco-Swiss border. The aim of the LHC is to reveal the fundamental structure of matter by causing counter-rotating beams of protons to collide at very high energies and temperatures, recreating the particle processes of the very early universe.
The incident was the perfect spoiler of the long ongoing party at CERN to celebrate getting things right – well-collimated proton beams in both directions that remained stable over several hundred orbits – in the very first attempt itself, not an easy task by any means. The builders of the machine, led by Lyn Evans of CERN, and the large community of physicists involved in the six experiments, with its mammoth particle detectors, were hoping to have the first proton collisions by November 2008 and for the physics to begin as soon as data started pouring in.
The setback has meant that the accelerator is likely to be up only by July 2009, according to the report of the committee that went into the cause and the nature of the incident. Indeed, if all contingency measures to make the machine completely secure against a similar incident in the future are to be put in place right away, it could mean that the serious physics will only start as late as 2010. read more
The investigating committee concludes that bad soldering led to the shutting down of the Large Hadron Collider.
CERN
Repair work under way on the dipole circuit in Sector 3-4, where the problem arose on September 19.
NINE days after the spectacular switching on of the world’s biggest and most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva (Frontline, October 10, 2008) on September 10, 2008, which was watched by an estimated one billion people and more across the world, a completely unexpected mishap struck this international scientific endeavour, the world’s biggest.
Built over nearly a decade and a half at a cost of about $8 billion by an international consortium of thousands of scientists, the gigantic, 27-kilometre-long circular machine is located in a 3.7-metre-diameter tunnel 100 m underground that straddles the Franco-Swiss border. The aim of the LHC is to reveal the fundamental structure of matter by causing counter-rotating beams of protons to collide at very high energies and temperatures, recreating the particle processes of the very early universe.
The incident was the perfect spoiler of the long ongoing party at CERN to celebrate getting things right – well-collimated proton beams in both directions that remained stable over several hundred orbits – in the very first attempt itself, not an easy task by any means. The builders of the machine, led by Lyn Evans of CERN, and the large community of physicists involved in the six experiments, with its mammoth particle detectors, were hoping to have the first proton collisions by November 2008 and for the physics to begin as soon as data started pouring in.
The setback has meant that the accelerator is likely to be up only by July 2009, according to the report of the committee that went into the cause and the nature of the incident. Indeed, if all contingency measures to make the machine completely secure against a similar incident in the future are to be put in place right away, it could mean that the serious physics will only start as late as 2010. read more
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